Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

This dazzling memoir promises to be a courageously frank, honest and poignant read. It will detail some of Fry's most turbulent and least-well-known years, with writing that will excite you, make you laugh uproariously, move you, inform you, and, above all, surprise you.

The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.

From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir. When Darnell Moore was 14, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death. Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling.

Carl Siciliano met Ali Forney—a Black nonbinary teenager known for fierce loyalty to friends and an unshakeable faith that “my God will love me for who I am”—in 1994 while working at a daytime center for homeless youth in New York City. Nineteen years old, Forney was one of thousands Siciliano encountered who had been driven from their homes by rejecting families, forced to struggle in the streets due to homophobic and transphobic violence in the shelters.

Bastard Out of Carolina, nominated for the 1992 National Book Award for fiction, introduced Dorothy Allison as one of the most passionate and gifted writers of her generation. Now, in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, she takes a probing look at her family's history to give us a lyrical, complex memoir that explores how the gossip of one generation can become legends for the next.

Do you know me?, the email began, sparking tremors of fear that turned into a full quake of panic when William Dameron discovered that his selfie had been stolen by strangers. On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity - a forty-year-old straight white male - had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance.

Brian Burke is one of the biggest hockey personalities - no, personalities full-stop - in the hockey media landscape. His brashness makes him a magnet for attention, and he does nothing to shy away from it. Most famous for advocating "pugnacity, truculence, testosterone, and belligerence" during his tenure at the helm of the Maple Leafs, Burke has lived and breathed hockey his whole life.

Greg Marshall's early years were pretty bizarre. Rewind the VHS tapes and you'll see a lopsided teenager limping across a high school stage, or in a wheelchair after leg surgeries, pondering why he's crushing on half of the Utah Jazz. Add to this home video footage a mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemos, a dad with ALS, and a cast of foulmouthed siblings. Fast forward the tape and you'll find Marshall happily settled into his life as a gay man only to discover he's been living in another closet his whole life.

Jill had a happy, healthy 20-year relationship with her college sweetheart, two wonderful kids, and rescue cat from the Humane Society. They lived in a nice suburban home with a white picket fence and owned a small bar that was rated one of the “Best Mom & Pop” businesses in Tampa Bay. From the outside, everything looked perfect. Perfectly Queer takes the listener on Jillian Abby's poignant and painfully funny rollercoaster of self-discovery as she identifies and eventually accepts herself as a lesbian just before her 40th birthday.

Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure. Now, at last, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story. And it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played.

Melissa Giberson is a middle-aged suburban wife and mother of two kids, solidly planted in the life she's always wanted. Yet she longs for something more—something she cant quite put her finger on until, one day at the Y, she finds herself mesmerized by the sight of a naked woman and asks herself for the first time: Am I gay?

In this groundbreaking new book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing - learning to get hit and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body - McBee examines the weight of male violence....

In this spirited account, Billie Jean King details her life's journey to find her true self. She recounts her groundbreaking tennis career - six years as the top-ranked woman in the world, 20 Wimbledon championships, 39 grand-slam titles, and her watershed defeat of Bobby Riggs in the famous "Battle of the Sexes". She poignantly recalls the cultural backdrop of those years and the profound impact on her worldview from the women's movement, the assassinations and anti-war protests of the 1960s, the civil rights movement, and, eventually, the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

This Boy and His Mother: Healing from Trauma as a Gay Latter-day Saint chronicles Preston Jenkins' journey back to faith and activity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Speaking with authenticity, Preston offers gospel insights gleaned from his experiences involving same-sex attraction, sexual and emotional abuse, an early return from an LDS mission, mental illness, and the eventual completion of a mission. Hope, faith, and never-failing charity are strikingly displayed. So, too, is the sufficient grace of Jesus Christ to holistically heal all wounds.

Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.

When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life.

In eighth grade, Amy was voted “Most likely to appear on Jeopardy!” by her classmates. Decades later, this trailblazer finally got her chance. Not only did she walk away with $1.3 million while captivating the world with her impressive forty-game winning streak, but she made history and won an even greater prize—the joy of being herself on national television and blazing a trail for openly queer and transgender people around the world. Now, she shares her singular journey that led to becoming an unlikely icon and hero to millions. Her superpower: Boundless curiosity and fearless questioning.

David Wojnarowicz's brief but eventful life was not easy. From a suburban adolescence marked by neglect, drugs, prostitution, and abuse to a squalid life on the streets of New York City, to fame - and infamy - as an activist and controversial visual artist whose work was lambasted in the halls of Congress, all before his early death from AIDS at age thirty-seven, Wojnarowicz seemed to be at war with a homophobic "establishment" and the world itself. Yet what emerged from the darkness was a truly extraordinary artist and human being.

Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world.