Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

The New York Times bestselling author of A Work in Progress and Note to Self moves fully into adulthood with his illuminating, soulful, bleeding collection of narrative, poetry, and original film photography. Humanitarian, entrepreneur, and content creator Connor Franta first captivated readers...

Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen’s Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator’s compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women’s work and feminist protest. The indisputable “queen...

When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain’s orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. “I had hope, just a little, you were still alive,” Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.

It’s hard enough coming out, but playing basketball for a nationally ranked school and trying to figure out your sexual identity in the closeted and paranoid world of big-time college sports - that’s a challenge. Kate Fagan’s love for basketball and for her religious teammates at the University of Colorado was tested by the gut-wrenching realization that she could no longer ignore the feelings of otherness inside her. In trying to blend in, Kate had created a hilariously incongruous world for herself in Boulder.

The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern...

Heer and Sumira share the tale of a friendship thriving despite the diversity of transgender experiences, Adira speaks to the affect of parental disaffection on the blossoming of a first love, Sudipta digs into the past to speak of an unlikely queertopia they’d found and HSW shares a journey of coming to terms with asexuality. To hear about these, and many more, join us as we explore the varying hues and journeys of queerness through this anthology of first-person LBT narratives.

It is my absolute pleasure to add my own personal emotional tone as I read to you my story of redemption from trauma and addiction. "At the tender age of six, Mark Turnipseed received what he felt was a clear and devastating message: It isn't okay to like other boys, and if you do, you're bound for Hell. His confusion and self-hatred made him determined to become the boy he believed he was supposed to be, but in attempting to live a lie, he descended into a hell of his own making.

Caroline "Tula" Cossey was born with male genitalia but went on to become a beautiful woman with a successful modeling career. My Story is Tula's candid thought-provoking, enlightening, humorous, heart wrenching, and motivational account of her struggles: her troubled childhood being bullied and taunted in East Anglia, her dreams of becoming a woman, the operations that liberated her sexually, and the journey from showgirl to James Bond girl to top international model.

This combination of serious artistic engagement with warmth and clarity of prose revels in the experiences and pleasures of art and the body, identity, and community.

When Jan Morris passed away in 2020, she was considered one of Britain's best-loved writers. The author of Venice, Pax Britannica, Conundrum, and more than fifty other books, her work was known for its observational genius, lyricism, and humor, and had earned her a passionate readership around the world.

In A Sinner in Mecca, author and filmmaker Parvez chronicles his pilgrimage as a very openly gay Muslim to Saudi Arabia, where Islam's heart beats . . . and where being true to himself is punishable by death. Risking his life, Parvez embarks on a Jihad of the self—filming his experience along the way. Already under fire for his documentary A Jihad for Love, which looks at the coexistence of Islam and homosexuality, he would undoubtedly face savage punishment if exposed—from being thrown off a cliff to public beheading.

""Very good writers have an ability to make you understand what they're feeling. But the very best writers have an ability to make you understand what you're feeling. And that's where Michael Arceneaux sits, and that's what he does in this new book. It's like he's crawling around inside your...

Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max's Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.

Transland is a fiery and revealing memoir that delves into what happens when a non-binary person goes looking for self-worth and a sense of belonging in fetish subculture, only to find that fetish communities come with just as many problematic rules, expectations, and hierarchies as mainstream ones.

Behind the glitz and glamour, Wayne has always felt like an outsider. Sleep reveals the difficulties for a working-class, gay man in handling the prejudices of his generation and living through the AIDS epidemic. Wayne was also the shortest principal dancer in the Royal Ballet - he had to spin twice as fast and jump twice as high to succeed. In this moving - but also laugh-out-loud and gossip filled - memoir, Wayne Sleep shows how he danced his way to success, fulfilment and love, and how he overcame obstacles and prejudice along the way.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRAND PRIX DU LIVRE DE MONTREAL* A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2023 “I spent eighteen years in a group that taught me to hate myself. You cannot be queer and a Jehovah’s Witness—it’s one or the other.” Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his...

Meet the unsung sheroes of history: the diverse, defiant and daring (wo)men who changed the rules, and their identities, to get sh*t done. A call to action for the modern world, this book celebrates the #GenderRebels who paved the way for women everywhere to be soldiers and spies; kings and queens; firefighters, doctors, pilots; and a Swiss Army knife’s-worth more. These superbly spirited (wo)men all had one thing in common: they defied the rules to progress in a man’s world.

‘A fascinating and thoughtful exploration of faith in the modern world. If you’re wondering why it matters and how to make sense of it, read on.’ – Clare Balding Is it possible to believe in God and be gay? How does it feel to be excluded from a religious community because of your...

From choirboy to drag act, grandson to mentor, poet to lover, Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In this formally inventive, candid and courageous book, he explores what he has carried in his body: wins and losses, shame and pride, pain and joy. Dean also investigates how radical self-acceptance and a willingness to abide with discomfort open up the possibility of a life lived beyond definition: a person unlimited.

SOON TO BE A TV SERIES WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ANDREW HAIGH New York Times Book Critics Favorite Book of the Year · Washington Post Notable Book of the Year “It’s all here: the grade school Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss; the adolescent acid trips; the fondness for Post-it notes and flying...