Laura Albert
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Laura Victoria Albert (born 1965) is the author of writings credited to the fictional teenage persona of JT LeRoy, a long-running literary hoax in which LeRoy was presented to the public and publishers as a transgendered, sexually questioning, abused, former homeless drug addict and male prostitute. Albert was raised in Brooklyn, and she and her former partner Geoffrey Knoop have a young son. She has also used the names Emily Frasier and Speedie.
In a New York magazine article in October 2005, Stephen Beachy suggested that LeRoy was a literary hoax created by Albert. [1] Beachy suggested that Albert was not only LeRoy's friend Emily Frasier, but also Speedie, LeRoy's street-hustling friend, as well as LeRoy himself. Albert has since confirmed that she is the writer behind the LeRoy books.[2]
Investigation showed that the advance for LeRoy's first novel, Sarah, was paid to Laura Albert's sister, JoAnna Albert, and that further payments to LeRoy were made to a Nevada corporation, Underdogs Inc., whose president is Carolyn F. Albert, Laura Albert's mother.
The New York Times published an article about Disneyland Paris with the JT LeRoy byline in the Sunday magazine T:Travel supplement in September 2005. [3] After the publication of the New York article, the Times found that expense receipts included an Air France itinerary for three people instead of the four described in the article. Employees at Disneyland Paris and two Paris hotels confirmed that the person claiming to be JT LeRoy matched photographs of Laura Albert, who told the employees she was traveling with her husband and son. She told hotel employees who thought JT LeRoy was male that she was a transsexual woman who had sex reassignment surgery three years earlier.
A 9 January 2006 article in the New York Times gave evidence that the role of LeRoy was played publicly by Savannah Knoop, the half-sister of Albert's partner. [4] Geoffrey Knoop later stated Albert was the author of the JT LeRoy works. [5] [6] Albert directly confessed to the hoax in a Fall 2006 Paris Review interview.[7]
[edit] References
- ^ Beachy, Stephen. "Who is the Real JT LeRoy? A search for the true identity of a great literary hustler", New York, October 2005.
- ^ L.A. Times "Writer Behind JT LeRoy Comes Clean"
- ^ LeRoy, JT. "Uncle Walt, Parlez-Vous Français?", New York Times T:Travel magazine, September 25, 2005.
- ^ St. John, Warren. "The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He's a She", New York Times, January 9, 2006.
- ^ St. John, Warren. "Figure in JT Leroy Case Says Partner Is Culprit", New York Times, February 7, 2006.
- ^ Boulware, Jack. "She is JT LeRoy", Salon, March 8, 2006.
- ^ Rich, Nathaniel. "Being JT LeRoy", The Paris Review, Fall 2006.
