Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

My Dalek Has Another Puncture is Simon Fisher-Becker’s second book in his autobiographical trilogy. An honest and inspiring account of his life after Doctor Who, the audiobook takes us on a switchback ride of auditions, castings, filming, and recording as Simon meets old friends and makes new ones while taking Dorium Maldovar, the bald blue intergalactic black-marketer, around the world to meet his fans. Natural raconteur Simon relates both tragedies and triumphs with refreshing honesty.

How would you react to that question if your grandmother asked you that question from her nursing home bed? That is the question that led me on a quest to find out if I really was adopted or if they were ramblings or confusion of my grandmother who thought I might be someone else. The quest led me on a journey to find out more about my family and what it really means and, in turn, learn more about myself and find who I really am.

Bestselling author Rachael Herron is stuck. She and her partner have lived in their beloved East Oakland home for 15 years, almost as long as they’ve been married. But the house is in a rough area, and they’re tied to a mortgage she’s not sure they’ll ever be able to pay off. So when the whispered longing for adventure grows into a bellow she can’t ignore, Rachael decides to utilize not only her dual citizenship but also her impulsive nature. She and her partner will abandon their standard-issue American life and move to the far-distant shores of Aotearoa.

Making My Pitch tells the story of Ila Jane Borders, who, despite formidable obstacles, became a Little League prodigy, MVP of her otherwise all-male middle school and high school teams, the first woman awarded a baseball scholarship, and the first to pitch and win a complete men’s collegiate game.

From the author of the award-winning novels Crossing the River and Scissors, Paper, Rock comes a powerful book about the transformative power of love. Fenton Johnson recounts the history of "how I feel in love how I came to be with someone else, how he came to death and how I helped." Johnson interweaves two stories: his own upbringing as the youngest of a Kentucky whiskey maker's nine children, and that of his lover Larry Rose, the only child of German Jews. survivors of the Holocaust.

Becoming a Man is a “moving narrative [that] illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of gender transition” (Kirkus Reviews). For 50 years, P. Carl lived as a girl and then as a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout - the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement.

Con la sua voce straordinaria, il suo essere una rockstar a dispetto di tutto e tutti, il suo anticonformismo, la sua vita trasgressiva e la sua prematura scomparsa...

As the US occupation of Iraq rages, novelist Mortada Gzar, a student at the University of Baghdad, has a chance encounter with Morise, an African American soldier. It’s love at first sight, a threat to them both, and a moment of self-discovery. Challenged by society’s rejection and Morise’s return to the US, Mortada takes to the page to understand himself. In his affecting memoir, Mortada interweaves tales of his childhood work as a scrap-metal collector in a war zone and the indignities faced by openly gay artists in Iraq with his impossible love story and journey to the US.

Comedian Shawn Hitchins explores his irreverent nature in this debut collection of essays. Hitchins doesn’t shy away from his failures or celebrate his mild successes - he sacrifices them for an audience’s amusement. Nothing is sacred. His first major break-up, how his mother plotted the murder of the family cat, his difficult relationship with his father, becoming an unintentional spokesperson for all redheads, and many more.

Piper Kerman lebt glücklich mit ihrem Verlobten in Manhattan, als ihr eine Jugendsünde zum Verhängnis wird. Das Gericht verurteilt sie zu einer 15-monatigen Haftstrafe. Über die Zeit im Frauengefängnis, über Schikanen, bösartige Attacken, aber auch über Freundschaften und vor allem ihre toughen und warmherzigen Mitgefangenen schreibt sie ohne Selbstmitleid, humorvoll und sehr unterhaltsam.

The 1970s were known for free love and experimentation. Few cared if you were gay, straight, bisexual or transgender. It was the era of "sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll". In the midst of all this appeared a woman who had turned the head of Al Capone, married into the famous Maybelline company, and possessed more than enough beauty, magnetism and allure to make men do most anything.

American author John Horne Burns (1916 - 1953) led a brief and controversial life, and as a writer, transformed many of his darkest experiences into literature. Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II he was stationed in Africa and Italy and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, was critically acclaimed and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military.

Before Jacqueline Woodson met Juliet, before her own self-realization, there were decades of friends, lovers, and family who defined the woman she’d become. In this haunting story of memory and identity, Jacqueline shares the profound impact they had on bending the path of her life; how they informed the dreams of her future; and how each one - some lost, all loved - would bring her to Juliet, her one and only.

Jenn Berney was one of those people who knew she was destined for motherhood - it wasn't a question of if, but when. So when she and her wife, Kelly, decided to start building their family, they took the next logical step: They went to a fertility clinic. But they soon found themselves entrenched in a medical establishment that didn't know what to do with people like them. With no man factoring into their relationship, doctors were at best embarrassed and at worst disparaging of the couple. Soon Jenn found herself stepping outside of the system determined to disregard her.

Ink from the Pen is the story of an educated, HIV+ gay man whose decades-long walk on the wild side came crashing down in 2004, when he found himself facing nine months in prison for dealing the crystal meth he’d become addicted to during the worst of the AIDS epidemic. Olmsted soon discovered his love of words was precisely what would get him through the experience. With a keen eye for detail and an unerring capacity to deftly convey the poignancy and absurdities of incarceration, Mark learned that creativity is one of the most powerful survival tools there is.

Recounting her experiences with sexist discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence - beginning in childhood, through the present - Woods lays out clear and unflinching personal vignettes that build in intensity as the number of times grows. Individually, and especially taken as a whole, these stories amount to powerful proof that sexual violence and discrimination are never just one-time occurrences, but part of a constant battle all women face every day.

Born to indigenous working-class Mexican immigrants in San Diego in the 1970s, Jesse Leon’s childhood was violently ruptured. A dangerous and harrowing encounter at a local gift shop when he was eleven years old left Jesse with a deadly secret. Hurt, alone, and scared for his life, Jesse numbed his pain by losing himself in the hyper-masculine culture of the streets and wherever else he could find it—in alcohol, drugs, and prostitution.

Event producer, music director, and community organizer Elaina Martin has over the past three decades become widely known in Eastern Ontario, bolstering queer representation, community sustainability, and the arts. In this soulful narrative, she shares how she grew into these roles and what she learned along the way.

Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking presents the author’s often provocative and always engaging thoughts on sexuality. Here, fourteen essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot-button topics such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay bashing and the U.S. Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac.

An award-winning biography of one of the first undercover journalists - a pioneering Swedish woman who lived a fascinating life of adventure and forbidden love and who changed journalism forever.