So, this might seem like a weird question, but hear me out. Does authenticity matter? Let me be more specific. Does art need to be authentic? What if you found out, for example, that your favorite writer—somebody whose traumatic life story you related to, somebody whose identity was a living, breathing part of the power of the stories they told—was a fake? Not the person they presented themselves to be at all? Would you be fine with it, or would you feel kind of…betrayed? And how would you feel about the stories? Would they hit a little different if you knew the person who wrote them was a big, stinky fraud? Join us for the story of an audacious literary con, a scam that made its mastermind a pile of money and a whole entourage of celebrity fans—and rocked the early 2000s literary scene to its core.

Sources:
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/20/jt-leroy-story-modern-literary-hoax-
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/23/my-life-as-jt-leroy-savannah-knoop-on-playing-the-great-literary-hoaxer
New York Magazine: https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/
Vanity Fair: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/08/jt-leroy-documentary-interview
Documentary "The Cult of J.T. LeRoy"
Investigation Discovery's "Impostors," episode "The Heart Is Deceitful"


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