Laura Albert's Collaborator to Publish JT LeRoy Memoir

The woman Laura Albert enlisted to publicly impersonate JT LeRoy, the fictional author created by Albert whose non-identity was exposed in 2005, will publish her own account of the hoax, the New York Post reported today. Twenty-seven-year-old Savannah Knoop, the half sister of Albert's former partner Geoffrey Knoop, has written Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, her memoir of socializing with celebrities while posing, complete with sunglasses and blond wig, as the author of Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, works purportedly based on the author's experiences as a twelve-year-old homeless, abused, and drug-addicted son of a prostitute. Seven Stories Press will publish Knoop's book in October.

Albert, the writer behind the pseudonym, has expressed hurt feelings over Knoop's claim to the LeRoy story. "I am not in any way connected with this book and it disgusts me," Albert told the Post. "Just because you play a writer doesn't mean you are a writer."

The following description of forthcoming memoir appears on the publisher's Web site: "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.... As Savannah and Laura struggle over control of the JT character, Savannah realizes the limits of the game, and is relieved when it’s over. Inadvertently, she finds herself through the adventure of being someone else."

Albert, who said in a 2006 Paris Review interview that she did not see LeRoy as a hoax, but rather "a veil upon a veil—a filter," went on to tell the Post that she is disgusted by the memoir. "I'm not interested in making a career of JT," she said. "I'm an artist."