Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Richard Coles narrates this witty account of life as a parish priest and Radio 4 broadcaster. After a life of sex and drugs and the Communards - brilliantly recounted in the highly acclaimed first volume of his memoirs Fathomless Riches - the Reverend Richard Coles went on to devote his life to God and Christianity. He is also a much-loved broadcaster, presenting Saturday Live on Radio 4 and giving us regular reason to Pause for Thought on Radio 2.

This is Aijazuddin’s riotous, intelligent memoir of searching for his place between two worlds while navigating a minefield of expectations, prejudice and self-doubt. In Manboobs, Aijazuddin confidently announces himself as a sharp voice in humour with his moving, wickedly funny search for love and the bravery required to be yourself.

On a hot summer day, twenty-eight-year-old Tommy Dorfman was enjoying a beautiful outing on a boat. But inside she felt unmoored. After a lifetime of confusion, she’d finally gained clarity around her gender and had begun to transition. But there were still elements of her story that she needed to fully confront. She sought guidance in a tarot deck. Maybe This Will Save Me, Dorfman’s spellbinding debut memoir, is structured through the cards of that tarot pull.

At fifteen years old, Daphne Scholinski was committed to a mental institution and awarded the dubious diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder. For three years and more than a million dollars of insurance, the problem was “treated”—with makeup lessons and instructions in how to walk like a girl. With a new epilogue by Scholinski, whose name is now Dylan and who identifies as nonbinary, this revised edition of The Last Time I Wore a Dress looks back at those experiences and their life since.

Philippa Ryder's journey to embracing her true self as a transgender woman has left an indelible mark on Irish culture. Growing up as a boy in the 1960s, she felt out of place, drawn to dressing in her sister's and later her wife's clothes. It wasn't until the 1990s that she discovered she wasn't alone in these feelings. Navigating the challenging path of transitioning from male to female, 'My Name is Philippa' tells an extraordinary tale of love, understanding, and the unwavering support of a family who stayed united as Philippa transformed from husband and father to wife and mother.

I'm Prancing as Fast as I Can is a coming of Gay story that takes us from a scared, self-hating kid who spends most of his time under his desk staring at the hunky man on the Doan's Pills box, to becoming a writer on Will & Grace, helping to make it a little easier for other scared, self-hating kids who might also be hiding and staring at their secret desire.

Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking presents the author’s often provocative and always engaging thoughts on sexuality. Here, fourteen essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot-button topics such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay bashing and the U.S. Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac.

Gorgeous music, riveting stories, and the open road ahead. Don’t miss your chance to join Rufus Wainwright, the inimitable singer, songwriter, and composer, as he tracks his fascinating journey as an artist and man over the course of his deeply familiar car ride between the storied home of his youth (Saint-Sauveur, Quebec) and New York City, the birthplace of his musical rise. Part of Audible’s Words + Music series, Road Trip Elegies features more than 20 songs performed by Rufus and a tight-knit band (including family and friends) at a recent set of performances out West.

What’s it like to parent a child in transition? Inspired by the acclaimed podcast How to Be a Girl, this is a highly personal and beautifully narrated memoir by Marlo Mack recounting the journey she’s been on since her three-year-old declared he should have been born a girl. And Mack agrees to the child’s request to be a girl.

Surprisingly little has been written about second-generation Bloomsbury who tantalised the original 'Bloomsburies' at Gordon Square parties with their captivating looks and provocative ideas. Young Bloomsbury introduces us to an extraordinarily colourful cast of characters, including novelist and music critic Eddy Sackville-West, 'who wore elaborate make-up and dressed in satin and black velvet', sculptor Stephen Tomlin and writer Julia Strachey.

Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.

The Tony Award-nominated writer of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and the long-running hit Off-Broadway play Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and a Sundance Festival award winner Charles Busch has created a unique place in the entertainment world as a playwright, LGBT icon, drag actor, director, and cabaret performer, with his extraordinary gift for both connecting with and channeling the leading ladies of show business.

When divorce moves young R/B Mertz away from rural Pennsylvania and their abusive father, Mertz's life is torn in two. Mertz's mom and new stepdad dive headfirst into conservative Catholic homeschooling, entrenching themselves in a world dominated by saints, prayers, and having as many babies as possible, just as Mertz is starting to realize they might be queer. Trying to stave off the inevitable, Mertz later enrolls in a conservative Catholic college in Ohio.

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

If you are transgendered, the feeling of wanting your body to match the sex you feel you are never goes away. For some, though, especially those who grew up before trans people were widely out and advocating for equality, these feelings were often compartmentalized and rarely acted upon. Now that gender reassignment has become much more commonplace, many of these people may feel increasing pressure to finally undergo the procedures they have always secretly wanted.

After Jason’s world falls apart in LA, he moves to Berkeley for a fresh start with his kid brother. Just one problem: his long-closeted Adderall addiction has exploded into an out-of-control crystal meth binge. Within weeks, Jason plunges into the sprawling ParTy n’ ’Play subculture of the Bay Area’s gay community. It is a wildly decadent scene of drugs, group sex, and criminals, and yet it is also filled with surprising characters, people who are continually subverting Jason’s own presumptions of the stereotypical tweaker.

Collecting deeply personal conversations with inspirational LGBTQ+ trailblazers (from Troye Sivan to Margaret Cho) about how they leveraged the challenges and insights they had as relative outsiders to succeed in the worlds of business, tech, politics, Hollywood, sports and beyond, Andrew Gelwick’s The Queer Advantage celebrates the unique power of queer identity. Their stories brim with the hard-won lessons gained over their careers.

From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do British parents and the wife of a handsome, successful man from an equally privileged family, Oliver played the parts expected of him. He checked off every box—marriage, children (four), a white-picket fence surrounding a stately home in Connecticut, and a golden retriever named Biscuit. But beneath the shiny veneer, Oliver was desperately trying to stay afloat as he struggled to maintain a facade of normalcy.

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?

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians provides access into an underrepresented and misunderstood community and will change the way listeners think about transgender people, faith, and the future of Christianity. By introducing transgender issues and language and providing stories of both biblical characters and real-life narratives from transgender Christians living today, Hartke helps listeners visualize a more inclusive Christianity, equipping them with the confidence and tools to change both the church and the world.