IDENTITY CRISIS
n the late ’90s and early 2000s, JT LeRoy was the toast of Hollywood. The author of celebrated, semi-autobiographical books and , the elusive, androgynous JT – a former teenage prostitute from rural Virginia – was beloved by Bono, Gus Van Sant, Winona Ryder, Courtney on film. But JT didn’t exist. He was the invention of Laura Albert, a thirtysomething writer based in San Francisco, while, for six years, JT was ‘played’ by Albert’s then sister-in-law Savannah Knoop. It remains one of modern literature’s great hoaxes.
