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Labour
A young boy lives with his mother and her good-for-nothing boyfriend in a small trailer. When a new baby comes along, he must take care of it the best he can, drawing inspiration from a book about the labors of Hercules. Labour is the new novella from acclaimed author JT LeRoy, the second in a series, the first of which was Harold's End. This volume also features watercolor illustrations from Australian artist Cherry Hood.
120 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2006
190 people want to read
About the author
J.T. LeRoy
10 books288 followersLaura Victoria Albert is the author of writings that include works credited to the fictional teenage persona of JT LeRoy, a long-running literary hoax in which LeRoy was presented to the public and publishers as a gender-variant, sexually questioning, abused, former homeless drug addict and male prostitute. Albert described LeRoy as an “avatar” rather than a “hoax,” and claimed that she was able to write things as LeRoy that she could not have said as Laura Albert. Albert was raised in Brooklyn, and she and her former partner Geoffrey Knoop have a young son. She has also used the names Emily Frasier and Speedie, and published other works as Laura Victoria and Gluttenberg.
Albert did not publish her writing as “memoir” – she published her writing as “fiction.”
Albert attests that she could not have written from raw emotion without the right to be presented to the world via JT LeRoy, whom she calls her “phantom limb” – a style of performance art she had been undertaking to deal with experiences even as a little girl, according to a 2006 interview in The Paris Review.
In November 2010, Laura Albert appeared at The Moth to tell her story on video.
Laura Albert has also written for the acclaimed television series Deadwood. She collaborated with director and playwright Robert Wilson for the international exhibition of his VOOM video portraits, and with the catalog for his “Frontiers: Visions of the Frontier” at Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). In 2012 she served on the juries of the first Brasilia International Film Festival and the Sapporo International Short Film Festival; she also attended Brazil’s international book fair, Bienal Brasil do Livro e da Leitura, where she and Alice Walker were the U.S. representatives. Brazil’s Geração Editorial has re-released the JT LeRoy books in a boxset under Laura Albert’s name, and she and JT are the subjects of the hit Brazilian rock musical JT, Um Conto de Fadas Punk (“JT, A Punk Fairy Tale”).
She has taught at Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and has lectured with artist Jasmin Lim at Artists’ Television Access with SF Camerawork's Chuck Mobley, in conjunction with a window installation about her work. She has also written for dot429, the world’s largest LGBTA professional network, and been an invited speaker at their annual conferences in New York.
Albert did not publish her writing as “memoir” – she published her writing as “fiction.”
Albert attests that she could not have written from raw emotion without the right to be presented to the world via JT LeRoy, whom she calls her “phantom limb” – a style of performance art she had been undertaking to deal with experiences even as a little girl, according to a 2006 interview in The Paris Review.
In November 2010, Laura Albert appeared at The Moth to tell her story on video.
Laura Albert has also written for the acclaimed television series Deadwood. She collaborated with director and playwright Robert Wilson for the international exhibition of his VOOM video portraits, and with the catalog for his “Frontiers: Visions of the Frontier” at Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). In 2012 she served on the juries of the first Brasilia International Film Festival and the Sapporo International Short Film Festival; she also attended Brazil’s international book fair, Bienal Brasil do Livro e da Leitura, where she and Alice Walker were the U.S. representatives. Brazil’s Geração Editorial has re-released the JT LeRoy books in a boxset under Laura Albert’s name, and she and JT are the subjects of the hit Brazilian rock musical JT, Um Conto de Fadas Punk (“JT, A Punk Fairy Tale”).
She has taught at Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and has lectured with artist Jasmin Lim at Artists’ Television Access with SF Camerawork's Chuck Mobley, in conjunction with a window installation about her work. She has also written for dot429, the world’s largest LGBTA professional network, and been an invited speaker at their annual conferences in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 22, 2008
So by now everyone knows that JT Leroy is a fictional persona concocted to screw a lot of people out of their money and time. What has rarely been said is that oodles of literati wanted so bad to support a homeless/junkie/hustler kid that they not only fell for the hoax, but over looked what was pretty shitty writing in the first place.
And now, the dozens of legitimately brilliant street kids with their notebooks won't have a chance at getting published for the next two decades or so. Check out the Roaddawgz project out of San Francisco's Tenderloin. I don't even blame the woman who cooked this all up, rather the larger community that is so hungry for the "real thing" they fell for the bullshit.
And now, the dozens of legitimately brilliant street kids with their notebooks won't have a chance at getting published for the next two decades or so. Check out the Roaddawgz project out of San Francisco's Tenderloin. I don't even blame the woman who cooked this all up, rather the larger community that is so hungry for the "real thing" they fell for the bullshit.
July 11, 2010
Literary fraud.
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February 22, 2008LA Weekly's cover story this week is on Laura Albert, the woman behind the author JT Leroy. We hope you enjoy it.
http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...
From Nancy Rommelmann's story:
"JT's stories made no sense. Sometimes he was Thor's father; sometimes Thor belonged to a woman named Emily, who was threatening to take the boy away. I read a Michael Musto column that claimed Speedie was a transsexual; I looked through the e-mailed photos — she did have awfully big feet. I was fairly sure the honeyed JT voice on the phone did not belong to the kid I'd met at the party, but I enjoyed the instant intimacy, and the access, however vicarious, to this white-hot corner of the literary world."
http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...
From Nancy Rommelmann's story:
"JT's stories made no sense. Sometimes he was Thor's father; sometimes Thor belonged to a woman named Emily, who was threatening to take the boy away. I read a Michael Musto column that claimed Speedie was a transsexual; I looked through the e-mailed photos — she did have awfully big feet. I was fairly sure the honeyed JT voice on the phone did not belong to the kid I'd met at the party, but I enjoyed the instant intimacy, and the access, however vicarious, to this white-hot corner of the literary world."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews