Auther LeRoy is Not a Former Male Hooker but a 40-year-old Woman
Heidi Benson
San Francisco Chronicle
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San Francisco (US):
Shock waves roiled the literary world Monday when new evidence surfaced that finally could prove San Francisco author JT LeRoy is not who he says he is. Instead of a former male hooker from a hardscrabble background, he apparently is a 40-year-old woman with middle-class roots.
LeRoy, who has cultivated celebrity and publishing industry friendships with the likes of Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Madonna, Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon, appears to have pulled off the greatest literary hoax in a generation.
Since 2000, LeRoy has been gaining fame for his fictional depictions of a 12-year-old boy lured into a life of truck-stop prostitution by his own mother. His first book, "Sarah," was shelved in bookstores under "fiction" but was marketed as semi-autobiographical. The author's life story was key to the success of the book.
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See Also:
US rent boy novelist was 'elaborate hoax'
Writer JT Leroy is Actually Laura Albert, New York Magazine Discovered in October
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But according to a story Monday in the New York Times by Warren St. John, "JT LeRoy" is actually a family project. The person who portrays LeRoy in public is Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half sister, who is in her mid-20s.
The person who writes the work, St. John argued, is Laura Albert, originally from Brooklyn.
On Monday afternoon, a Chronicle reporter rang the bell of a dingy, cream-colored Victorian apartment house on Larkin Street that is the residence of Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, according to an online directory. A woman answered but refused to open the door.
Jan 10, 2006
Heidi Benson
San Francisco Chronicle
__________________
San Francisco (US):
Shock waves roiled the literary world Monday when new evidence surfaced that finally could prove San Francisco author JT LeRoy is not who he says he is. Instead of a former male hooker from a hardscrabble background, he apparently is a 40-year-old woman with middle-class roots.
LeRoy, who has cultivated celebrity and publishing industry friendships with the likes of Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, Madonna, Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon, appears to have pulled off the greatest literary hoax in a generation.
Since 2000, LeRoy has been gaining fame for his fictional depictions of a 12-year-old boy lured into a life of truck-stop prostitution by his own mother. His first book, "Sarah," was shelved in bookstores under "fiction" but was marketed as semi-autobiographical. The author's life story was key to the success of the book.
_______________________________
See Also:
US rent boy novelist was 'elaborate hoax'
Writer JT Leroy is Actually Laura Albert, New York Magazine Discovered in October
_______________________________
But according to a story Monday in the New York Times by Warren St. John, "JT LeRoy" is actually a family project. The person who portrays LeRoy in public is Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half sister, who is in her mid-20s.
The person who writes the work, St. John argued, is Laura Albert, originally from Brooklyn.
On Monday afternoon, a Chronicle reporter rang the bell of a dingy, cream-colored Victorian apartment house on Larkin Street that is the residence of Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, according to an online directory. A woman answered but refused to open the door.
Jan 10, 2006
