Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: Massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-related complex. A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power - ACT UP - in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. 

A funny, daring, bawdy and incredibly honest memoir from the anti-ageist, anti-body shaming, pro-sex advocate and erotic provocateur. 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...

The author’s oneness with his God from childhood is shown to help you remember who you are in your relationship and oneness with God. God finally said to Mike: "Stop, we're not going on any further till you accept yourself as being gay. I made you gay. And I love what I made." Mike's concept of a God doesn't make mistakes. Jesus didn't come to save us from an imperfect God who tried to create a perfect human being and couldn't, but then demanded of us to be perfect or face damnation in hell.

A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when comedian and writer Shawn Hitchins loses two great loves, five months apart, to sudden death. In this deeply poignant memoir that combines sober self-portrait with tender elegy, Hitchins explores the messiness of being alive: the longing and desire, scorching-earth anger, raw grief - and the pathway of healing he discovers when he lets his heart remain open.

Anne Hull grew up in rural Central Florida, barefoot half the time and running through the orange groves her father’s family had worked for generations. The ground trembled from the vibrations of bulldozers and jackhammers clearing land for Walt Disney World. “Look now,” her father told her as they rode through the mossy landscape together. “It will all be gone.” But the real threat was at home, where Hull was pulled between her idealistic but self-destructive father and her mother, a glamorous outsider from Brooklyn struggling with her own aspirations.

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.

Free Rose Light is the wide-ranging story of the people and community of South Street Ministries, in Akron, Ohio, told in the style of the ministry - improvisational, risky, and present. As much as this is the story of South Street through O'Connor's experience of the organization, it is also an invitation to the listener by example.

Alaska Thunderfuck 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. Before RuPaul's Drag Race became a worldwide phenomenon, Drag was mostly an...

Ewan Forbes was born Elizabeth to a wealthy landowning family in 1912. As young as six, it was clear that the gender assigned to him at birth was incorrect. With the financial means of seeing specialist doctors in Europe and procuring synthetic hormones, Ewan was able to live as a boy, and then as a man, even correcting the gender on his birth certificate in order to marry. Then, in 1965, Ewan found himself in line to inherit the family baronetcy.

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—told by the bombshell herself. On Good Friday in 1953, at only 18 months old, 25 miles from the nearest hospital in Manhattan, Kansas...

Inspiring and honest, this unique memoir of gender transition and coming of age proves it’s never too late to find your true identity.

As long as there have been humans, there have been LGBTQI+ people. From an 18th century gentleman’s servant known as 'Princess Seraphina', to a lesbian punk rocker in Malaysia, challenging her country’s homophobic laws today; queer life always finds a way. We join Queer Eye’s Tan France to take a look at the lives, past and present, of those who have proudly defied rigid concepts of normality.

From the self-proclaimed Queen of the Stunted Late Bloomers and one of the most exciting emerging voices in comedy comes an honestly funny memoir about the awkward, cringeworthy, hilarious, and longest possible journey of coming of age and into her own.

Come Out, Come Out is a podcast about coming out of the closet, and it’s also a funny, joyful exploration of love, sex and the pursuit of happiness.

Born Joel David Katz to a wild and wooly Jewish American family in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932, Joel Grey began his life in the theater at the age of nine, starting in children's theater and then moving to the main stage. He was hooked, and his seven-decades-long career charts the evolution of American entertainment - from Vaudeville performances with his father, Mickey Katz, to the seedy, gangster-filled nightclubs of the '40s.

Born in 1962, Alexandra Billings grew up in a decade in which being herself was illegal. When she started transitioning in 1980, the word “Transgender” didn’t exist. With no Trans role models and no path to follow, Alexandra did what her family, teachers, and even friends said was impossible: Alexandra forged ahead. Spanning five decades, from profound lows to exhilarating highs, This Time for Me captures the events of a pioneering life.

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. 

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER A poignant and hilarious memoir from the cultural icon, gay rights activist, and four-time Tony Award–winning actor and playwright, revealing never-before-told stories of his personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, and of his fabled career Harvey...

The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and...

Brought to you by Penguin. A hilarious and inspiring guide to transforming your life through lessons from drag, by the UK's favourite drag queen and star of RuPaul's Drag Race UK, Bimini Bon Boulash. Bimini Bon Boulash is the nation's sweetheart, capturing hearts and minds as the gag-inducing...