In the conclusion of our series on Misery Lit and Literary Fraud, we discuss two more famous cases of fabricated memoir and what our conspicuous consumption of trauma porn tells us about ourselves and the cultural narratives around female suffering. 

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Sources

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/khouri-admits-lies-20040818-gdjkm0.html

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/bestsellers-lies-exposed-20040724-gdjerm.html

https://www.theage.com.au/national/khouri-the-troubled-life-of-a-fake-20040731-gdyd40.html

https://australia-explained.com.au/mavericks/helen-demidenkos-hand-that-signed-the-paper

https://www.bu.edu/bostonia/summer09/hoax/

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/from-the-archives-1995-writer-demidenko-revealed-to-be-helen-darville-20200813-p55ldc.html

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n22/peter-craven/diary

https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14718/

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/books/the-unmasking-of-jt-leroy-in-public-hes-a-she.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/health/18well.html

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/helen-forrester-99jsdx093kk

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/jun/15/childrensservices.biography

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6563529.stm

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/garden/28jones.html

Metdepenningen, Marc.Misha Defonseca’s Confessions, Le Soir. Feb 29, 2008. Accessed March 12, 2024 via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20080302203827/http://www.lesoir.be/channels/cinema/exclusif-2008-02-28-580849.shtml

Bury, Liz. Tugging at Heart Strongs. Bookseller.com 2/22/2007. Accessed March 7, 2024 via Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080804101600/http://www.thebookseller.com/in-depth/feature/34722-tugging-at-heart-strings.html

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/bestsellers-lies-exposed-20040724-gdjerm.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/literary-hoaxes-and-the-ethics-of-authorship

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/magazine/dysfunction-for-dollars.html

Lomax, John Nova. Coal Miner Mother of a Mess. Houston Press. Aug 25, 2005. 

https://www.houstonpress.com/music/coal-miner-mother-of-a-mess-6548530