By the time Jack was 16, he was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs, was hanging out with rock stars in LA and living a life that any teenager would aspire to—and then the reality show The Osbournes turned him into a global celebrity. As much as Jack enjoyed his fame, underneath it all he was still an awkward teenager, using his sense of humor as a protective shield. With fame and money came greater access to drugs and soon his addictions took a firmer hold on him and his behavior was soon out of control. In 21 Years Gone Jack writes with brutal frankness about his descent into addiction and the low point he reached when his mother Sharon was diagnosed with cancer. Scared that his she might die, Jack retreated further into his alcoholic shell, hating who he was, hating what he did. When Sharon realized what was happening she told Jack he had to go into rehab and slowly he turned his life around. Discovering a passion for extreme sports, he went from overweight and unfit to the lean young man he is today—courtesy of such adventures as running with the bulls in Pamplona, fighting a Thai martial arts expert, and scaling El Capitan, one of the world's toughest climbs.

    Biss doesn’t just love Beethoven more than other music, he loves it more than most things. It’s the lens through which he understands the world, and has been since he can remember. But in Unquiet Biss reveals the full extent to which Beethoven is also a ruthless lens through which he views himself.Biss provides listeners front and center access to his long overdue confrontation with a painful truth: Living with Beethoven has essentially amounted to severing all meaningful ties with himself. As we learn in rich detail, amidst the treasures Beethoven’s music has gifted Biss also lies searing self-doubt and heaps of crippling anxiety. Biss’s raw self-reflection is delivered through pitch-perfect prose, delving deep into the fascinating paradox that the greatest pleasure in his life is also responsible for imprisoning him. Beethoven’s defining personal characteristic, for example—his unwavering self-conviction and weapons-grade callousness—only served to mock Biss’s own perceived shortcomings and vulnerabilities. This captivating combination of wit and wisdom Biss readily shares is only interrupted by something even more extraordinary—his new interpretations of movements from seven of Beethoven's sonatas, including the Pathetique and Tempest, and his groundbreaking, awe-inducing final sonatas.Unquiet both begins and ends with Jonathan Biss staring down the daunting complexity and infinite majesty of Beethoven's last piano sonatas. But between these two points, the singular pianist has traversed a world of healing. An immeasurable weight has been lifted from him—by him. And we have witnessed its dramatic rise. While his journey is a fantastically unique one, if we listen close, we can hear ours too. An endless battle to confront and quiet our greatest pain so that we can embrace something even greater. Take a moment, and heed the sound.

    Hit with this devastating barrage, Tig took her grief onstage. Days after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she broke new comedic ground, opening an unvarnished set with the words, “Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer.” Word of the set went viral instantly. This set was ultimately released as Tig’s sophomore album, Live, which sold 100,000 units in just six weeks and was nominated for a Grammy. Now, the wildly popular star takes stock of that no good, very bad year—a difficult yet astonishing period in which tragedy turned into absurdity and despair into joy. An inspired combination of the deadpan silliness of her comedy and the open-hearted vulnerability that has emerged in the wake of that dire time, Untitled is a moving and often hilarious look at this very brave, very funny woman’s journey through the darkness and her thrilling return.

    Now with a new preface and illustrations, this "scrapbook" of their work—along with Andrea Weiss' lively commentary—highlights the political, social, and artistic lives of the renowned lesbian and bisexual Modernists, including Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Beach, and many more.Painstakingly researched and profusely illustrated, it is an enlightening account of women who between wars found their selves and their voices in Paris. A wealth of photographs, paintings, drawings, and literary fragments combine with Weiss' revealing text to give an unparalleled insight into this extraordinary network of women for who Paris was neither mistress nor muse, but a different kind of woman.

    Bohemians is the graphic history of this movement and its illustrious figures, recovering the utopian ideas behind millennial communities, and covering the rise of Greenwich Village, the multiracial and radical jazz world, and West Coast and Midwest bohemians, among other scenes.Drawn by an all-star cast of comics artists, including rising figures like Sabrina Jones, Lance Tooks, and Summer McClinton, alongside established artists like Peter Kuper and Spain Rodriguez, Bohemians is a broad and entertaining account of the rebel impulse in American cultural history.featuring work bySpain Rodriguez,Sharon Rudahl,Peter Kuper, Sabrina Jones, David Lasky, Afua Richardson,Lance Tooks,Milton Knight, and others.The ebook edition is expanded from the paperback edition, andincludes additional chapters on the swing music scene,La Bohemeandmidwest bohemians, as well as expanded material on the Greenwich Village intellectuals, Walt Whitman and Harlem jazz club Mintons Playhouse.

    Like the millions of children growing up in these families today, she often found herself in the middle of the political and moral debates surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) parenting.Drawing on a decade of community organizing, and interviews with more than fifty grown sons and daughters of LGBT parents, Garner addresses such topics as coming out to children, facing homophobia at school, co-parenting with ex-partners, the impact of AIDS, and the children's own sexuality.Both practical and deeply personal, Families Like Mine provides an invaluable insider's perspective for LGBT parents, their families, and their allies.

    But Rupert Everett is, of course, one of a kind. Mischievous, touching, and nothing less than brilliant, this new memoir is filled with brand-new stories from childhood to the present. Astonishing encounters, tragedy and comedy, vivid portraits of friends and rivals, and razor-sharp observations of the celebrity circus from L.A. to London and beyond—there is something extraordinary on every page. From New York to Moscow to Berlin to Phnom Penh, Vanished Years takes the reader on a wild and wonderful new journey with a charming (and rather disreputable) companion.

    Shock Treatment includes Karen Finley’s most provocative and acclaimed performance monologues, essays, and poems, with “The Constant State of Desire,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “It's Only Art,” and “The Black Sheep.” Excoriating misogyny, homophobia, abusive families, greed, and state coercion of bodies and minds, Finley holds out hope for a world informed not by hate and fear, but by truth and unconditional love.

    Offers a behind-the scenes, photographic look at a 1996 concert tour with the legendary Patti Smith, presenting more than one hundred images that capture life on the road with the artist.

    The subsequent stage play became one of Broadway's longest-running comdies and the 1958 film was nominated for six Oscars. This volume charts the success of Auntie Mame.

    From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.--Off Our Backs

    In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman’s developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.

    Written between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, with examinations of anxiety, death, first loves, and first lusts, Graffiti extends a hand to those undergoing the trials and uncertainty of teenagehood, and assures them they're not alone.

    Sledge artfully draws from Bishop's lifelong correspondences and biography to imagine the poet's intensely private world, revealing the literary genius who lived in conflict with herself both as a writer and as a woman.A seemingly idyllic existence in Soares's glass house in the jungle gives way to the truth of Bishop's lifelong battle with alcoholism, as well as her eventual status as one of modernism's most prominent writers. Though connected to many of the most famous cultural and political figures of the era, Soares too is haunted by her own demons. As their secrets unfold, the sensuous landscape of Rio de Janeiro, the rhythms of the samba and the bossa nova, and the political turmoil of 1950s Brazil envelop Bishop in a world she never expected to inhabit. The More I Owe You is a vivid portrait of two brilliant women whose love for one another pushes them to accomplish enduring works of art.

    Disgusted by an overabundance of phallocratic narratives and Freytag’s pyramid, she turns to a subcultural canon of resistance and failure. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, it documents the survival of a demonized single mother figuring things out.