Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, best-selling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of 12 months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably.

This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the listener through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Spectacles, the hilarious, creative and incredibly moving memoir from much loved comedian, writer and presenter Sue Perkins. When I began writing this book, I went home to see if my mum had kept some of my stuff. What I found was that she hadn't kept some of it. She had kept all of it - every bus ticket, postcard, school report....

Written with White’s signature honesty, irreverence, and wit, The Loves of My Life is the culmination of a legend's life and work, a delightful and moving tour of over seventy years of being unabashedly gay and in love with love in all its forms.

Growing up in the Hasidic community of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Sara Glass knew one painful truth: what was expected of her and what she desperately wanted were impossibly opposed. Tormented by her attraction to women and trapped in a loveless arranged marriage, she found herself unable to conform to her religious upbringing and soon, she made the difficult decision to walk away from the world she knew. Sara’s journey to self-acceptance began with the challenging battle for a divorce and custody of her children, an act that left her on the verge of estrangement from her family and community.

In the 1950s, a young Ngāhuia is fostered by a family who believe in hard work and community. Although close to her kuia, she craves more: she wants higher education and refined living. But whānau dismiss her dreams. To them, she is just a show-off, always getting into trouble, talking back and running away. In this fiery memoir about identity and belonging, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku describes what was possible for a restless working-class girl from the pā.

This is how Danielle felt for most of her life. For the best part of five decades, within a hyper-masculine sporting environment, Danielle Laidley harboured a secret. As a boy growing up in the backblocks of Perth, as a teenager and young man playing AFL, as a married father of three, she knew she was female, regardless of the gender she was assigned at birth.

Raw, moving and savagely funny, What You Into? is Josh Fox's autobiographical account of his spiral into the Grindr world of casual sex, hook-ups and dating apps following the break-up of his marriage. He documents this journey diary-style, chronicling the often weird, at times dark world of casual sex as he navigates his grief and anger through the consumption of men—only to discover that he too is being consumed by the process.

Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.

Kristin and Jenny’s marriage started with an ultimatum: to further their relationship, Kristin must watch Jenny's favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With the terms set, they began a journey that has led them through seven seasons of the beloved genre show, a podcast rewatching the series with their newly minted listenership of “Scoobies,” unexpected success, and a divorce. Through it all, their love for Buffy and their commitment to their community held them together against the odds.

Lukas Gage was having one of the shittiest weeks of his life. Not only was his beloved grandmother dying across from the building where, months prior, Lukas had grappled with the dissolution of his marriage, but he was also forced to sit next to his mostly absent, tit-obsessed father the entire time. Naturally, Lukas did the smartest thing anyone can do in a crisis of death, divorce and daddy issues: doom scroll to see what random people on the internet were saying about him. People were calling him an attention whore – and they were absolutely right. As a toddler, he set his room on fire.

The voice, the dressing-down, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of Private Lives, Hay Fever, and Blithe Spirit is not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward's songs - "Mad About The Boy", "Mad Dogs and Englishman" - are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar.

Edward Enninful has lived an extraordinary life. Here, for the first time, he shares the remarkable, inspiring story of his journey from a childhood bedroom in Ghana overlooking firing squads, to 1990s London—becoming the youngest-ever fashion director of i-D magazine at just eighteen years old. Now the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue, he has created game-changing images of everyone from Beyoncé to Meghan Markle, Kate Moss to Oprah Winfrey, Adele to Rihanna, and many more stars he now counts as friends.

The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells - and told by the bombshell herself.

Written with verve and sparkling prose, Black trans leader Tourmaline brings this iconic, scandalous, vital justice warrior to life in full colour for the first time. Through nearly two decades of research and unprecedented access, Tourmaline has become Marsha’s leading archivist and handles her life and story with care, attention and a perfect dose of humour.

Mohsin grew up in a deprived pocket of East London; his family was close-knit but very religiously conservative. From a young age Mohsin felt different, but in a home where being gay was inconceivable, he also felt very alone. Outside of home Mohsin went to a failing inner city school where gang violence was a fact of life. As he grew up, life didn’t seem to offer teenage Mohsin any choices: he was disenfranchised as a poor brown boy, and he was isolated from his family as a closet gay Muslim.

Bacon concealed many important aspects of his life. He described himself as an asthmatic child in Ireland with foxhunting parents and a tyrannical father, but he was also rescued by a series of formidable women—women who in this biography emerge in their own right. He was never just a dissolute young man but was also a passionate reader, largely self-taught. Early on, influenced by Eileen Gray, he became a hard-working and ambitious designer, a brief career explored here in detail for the first time. He dreamed of remaking the modern room.

It’s easy to be yourself when who and what you are is in vogue. But growing up Black and gay in America has never been easy. Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the Tony Award-winning star of Broadway’s Kinky Boots; and before he was an acclaimed recording artist, actor, playwright, and all-around diva, Porter was a young boy who didn’t fit in.

In in his debut book for adults, Jeffery Self invites listeners into his world, taking them through the usual foibles of gay adolescence, amplified in the vast wasteland of the American South and the odd characters who peopled it, from shoddy community theater productions to underage drinking with Broadway stars, from downtown comedy rooms to adventure-filled bedrooms.

Who - or what - was the real love of Freddie Mercury's life? Millions of Queen and screen fans who watched the Oscar-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody believe that Mary Austin, the woman he could never quite let go of, was the love of Freddie Mercury's life. But the truth is infinitely more complicated. Best-selling biographer and music writer Lesley-Ann Jones explores the charismatic frontman's romantic encounters and reveals why none of his love interests ever perfected the art of being Freddie's life partner.