Biographies & Memoirs

In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, best-selling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep....

From the incomparable Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner, Unprotected is the story of a singular artist in his own words - a powerful and revealing autobiography about race, sexuality, and art....

Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison-abolitionist movements for more than 50 years....

Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure.... 

Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery....

In this heartfelt, funny, and touching memoir, one of the stars of Netflix’s Emmy Award-winning smash-hit Queer Eye reveals how an Englishman raised in a traditionally religious home became a fashion icon - and the first openly gay, South Asian man on television....

There is absolutely no logical reason why I am here. The life trajectory my nationality and class and circumstances portended for me was not even remotely close to the one I now navigate. But logic is a science and living is an art....

In this inspiring and intimate self-portrait of the champion of equality that encompasses a brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism, and an ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice, Billie Jean King details her life's journey to find her true self....

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years....

Alaska spills the tea on her meteoric rise from timid Pennsylvania kid to drag superstar in this intimate photographic memoir that will appeal to diehard Alaska admirers and broader drag fans alike....

Growing up in small-town Ohio isn't easy, particularly when you're a closeted gay kid surrounded by...no one openly gay. Luckily, Danny Pellegrino grew up in the '90s, coming of age when the internet opened up a whole new world....

Where Every Body Yoga taught us how to do yoga, Yoke tells us why. Jessamyn writes about what she calls the yoga of the everyday - a yoga that is not just about poses but about applying the hard lessons we learn on the mat to the even harder daily project of living....

The legendary frontman of Judas Priest, one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time, celebrates five decades of heavy metal in this tell-all memoir....

Searing and extremely personal essays, shot through with the darkest elements America can manifest, while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners....

The man behind the Real Housewives writes about his lifelong love affair with pop culture that brought him from the suburbs of St. Louis to his own television show....

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away...

With unflinching honesty and moving prose, Janet Mock relays her experiences of growing up young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America....

Anti-ageist, anti-body shaming, pro-sex advocate and erotic provocateur David Pevsner shares his funny, daring, bawdy, and incredibly honest memoir....

You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants...

From a young Harvard and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall....

A heart-wrenching, eye-opening, and giggle-inducing memoir about what it's like to grow up not sure if you're (a) a boy, (b) a girl, (c) something in between, or (d) all of the above....

Throughout the past year, teacher Chasten Glezman Buttigieg has emerged on the national stage, having left his classroom in South Bend, Indiana, to travel cross-country in support of his husband, former mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Pete's groundbreaking presidential campaign....

R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went - whether it was his rich, mostly White, suburban high school, his conservative Black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city - he found himself on the outside looking in....

Christopher Yuan, the son of Chinese immigrants, discovered at an early age that he was different. He was attracted to other boys....

LGBTQ advice columnist John Paul Brammer writes a “wise and charming” (David Sedaris) memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey from a queer, mixed-race kid in America’s heartland to becoming the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw” of his generation....

Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery - from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love.

Over the course of his 35-year career in show business, David Pevsner has done it all. He’s acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in independent films, and on numerous TV network shows. As he continues his career in entertainment, Pevsner has also dedicated himself to exploring his deepest sexual fantasies. In his late 30s, he became a mature male escort, and over the last several years has attracted a large international fan base through his blog of erotic photographs celebrating nudity and sexuality. Damn Shame is David Pevsner’s incredible story.

A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez's uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at 13-years-old to become a man. Listeners follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where he was diagnosed a "high-risk homosexual". 

Oscar Wilde was a wild one. His statements were bold, his career was successful, and his tongue was sharp. Not only did he disturb the common narrative of the nuclear family, the Catholic church, and the idea of patriotism, but he also blew many people away with his defense of his principles, his criticism of the state, philosophies on life itself, and more. Being open about being a homosexual in a time when it was unaccepted and even illegal, his life ended in imprisonment and exile. Yet, despite his orientation and his controversial preferences, his prose and poetry did not suffer.

Tim and Rod grew up a few suburbs from each other in Newcastle, New South Wales. They were gay, but their worlds were not. Before they found each other, they were alone and miserable, marooned in a sea of impossible expectations. Rod was shackled by a conservative Christian upbringing, while Tim felt unmanly and inferior beside his macho, sport-obsessed older brothers. After enduring their own private versions of hell, Tim and Rod crossed paths on a dating app. They swiped for Mr Right, and suddenly everything clicked.

What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.

Forty years ago, there were no role models for Dawn, who, in early childhood, knew that something was really not right about her body. She had no idea what it was. Perhaps, her family also sensed something about this as well because they treated her like an outsider, and she suffered unthinkable abuse because of it. She had no name for what she was feeling and no one to turn to. If her teenaged suicide plan had been realized, or had she not had the compassion of a few key people along the way, there would be no triumph to be shared in this audiobook.

 Doctors gave Vishwas one year to live - every year for 20 years. Six times it looked as though death was imminent. Despite living with HIV/AIDS for 35 years, he kept living an extraordinary life by every measure. Ten years after AIDS became survivable (thanks to anti-retroviral drugs), Vishwas faced a whole new life-threatening challenge. Listen in as he shares his amazing life in intimate detail with his psychologist (and with us) in this unique memoir. 

D’yan Forest has always done things her way - or her ways, because she’s lived a dozen different lives. She’s been a desperate Boston housewife, a New York night-club singer, and a Paris swinger. She’s been the only Jewish girl in a Christian choir and the female pianist in a transvestite cabaret. She had day jobs teaching basketball, piano, and sex education. At 86, D’yan is still a working stand-up comedian and musician, but she’s much, much more than that, as this hilarious but heartfelt memoir reveals....

Greatest Hits of My Childhood Trauma is the story of a boy fighting to exist in a world that would rather throw him away. A memoir of growing up gay in '90s Middle America, this shocking tale of a failed attempt at conversion therapy will make you laugh, cry, and want to burn everything to the ground. Known as "The Filthiest Gay Rapper Alive," the debut foray into the literary world of Alex Dark (better known as MC Crumbsnatcher) is not to be missed.

Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks - posthumously discovered behind Highsmith’s linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta - traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who “[worked] like mad to be something”.

In My Drug Dealer Brought Me to God, Allen recounts his quest to find meaning, self-acceptance, and his life’s purpose. He battles addiction, the heartache of disappointing, toxic relationships, and alienation from his family. One day, his coworker, roommate, friend, and drug dealer, Marie, shares her belief that God made everyone for a purpose and wants us to be ourselves. With God as the focal point of his spiritual journey, Allen comes to understand that change has to start from within.