Galleycat’s Ron Hogan gets some face time with Laura Albert, the writer formerly known as JT Leroy. She’s not repentant about the hoax, which at least makes for more interesting reading than if she was contrite.
“People always talked about the authenticity of the work,” Laura Albert tells me as a makeup artist fixes her eyes during a photo shoot to create promotional materials for a European TV dcoumentary. “They saw that there was obviously great pain behind it. I was doing it the only way I could. My childhood was hell. I went through a minefield, and I put on camoflauge in order to tell the truth. Billy Corgan got it like that,” she says, snapping her fingers. “He understood it immediately. He didn’t feel duped.”
But this is my favorite quote:
“Who pretends to be transgendered just to get attention?” she asks.
Exactly.
