Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy - Softcover

Knoop, Savannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583228519 ISBN 13: 9781583228517

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2008

Synopsis

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart (as JT) and Laura Dern.

The JT LeRoy scandal is a story of our times. In January 2006, the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy. A media frenzy ensued as JT’s fans, mentors, and readers came to terms with the fact that the gay-male-ex-truck-stop-prostitute-turned literary-wunderkind was really a girl from San Francisco, whose sister-in-law wrote the books.
Girl Boy Girl is the story of how Savannah Knoop led this bizarre double life for six years, trading a precarious existence as a college dropout for a life in which she was embraced by celebrities and artists—Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Mary Ellen Mark, Winona Ryder, Asia Argento, Sharon Olds, Gus Van Sant, Mike Pitt, Calvin Klein, and Shirley Manson, to name a few—and traveled the world. Telling her side of the story for the first time, Savannah reveals how being perceived as a boy gave her a sense of confidence and entitlement she never had before. Her love affair with Asia Argento is particularly wrenching, as they embark on an intimate relationship that causes more alienation than closeness.
As Savannah and Laura struggle over control of the JT character, Savannah realizes the limits of the game - - and inadvertently finds herself through the adventure of being someone else.

About this title

About the Author

Savannah Knoop is a New York-based artist who creates and employs strategies of permission through writing, performance, and object-making. In 2001, she founded the clothing line Tinc, which ran until 2009, with creative partner Parachati Pattajotti. In 2007, she published the memoir titled Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy (Seven Stories Press) cataloguing her experiences of playing her sister in law's writing persona and avatar JT Leroy. It was made into the major motion picture Jeremiah Terminator Leroy co-written by she and director Justin Kelly, starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern. She received her BA at at CunyBa under the mentorship of Vito Acconci, and her MFA at Virginia Common Wealth University in Sculpture+ Extended Media.

From Booklist

When is an HIV-positive, transgender, ex-truck-stop-prostitute turned pseudo-celebrity novelist none of the above? When the faux man of letters is JT Leroy, revealed to be erstwhile community-college coed Savannah Knoop, who masqueraded as her middle-aged sister-in-law Laura’s nom de plume. At 18, Knoop started living in public as JT, “a boy who became a girl, still pretending to be a boy.” Secret thumbsucker and compulsive overeater Laura, who was JT’s publicist, Speedie, created JT as a metaphor for her own pain—perhaps. Eventually, portraying JT became Savannah’s “exciting reprieve from real life. He had access to a world so beyond what I thought could be my own.” The game ran for seven years, ending in a 2006 public revelation/scandal. “The whole experience had been a contagious lie,” quoth Savannah, “that spread and obstructed what I wanted my life to be.” What with snapshots and celebrity photos, her confession’s a breezy, fast, oddly likable read for fans of bizarre deceit or, perhaps, just the bizarre. --Whitney Scott

About this edition

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1583228519
• ISBN 13: 9781583228517
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224