This week Hephzibah Anderson spoke with Stephen Colbert about her recent memoir, Chastened: The Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex.

Anderson’s memoir tells the story of her self-assigned year without sex, with the intention of gaining insight into the increasingly emotionally frustrating world of dating, love, and intimacy. Read more »

“When you’re a writer you have to keep producing. When you’re a gambler you have to keep winning. You have to be comfortable with the uncertainty.”

“Every gambler is a neurotic with an unconscious wish to lose,” writes Beth Raymer, author of the new gambling memoir Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling . “And as for the rare professionals who are talented enough to beat the house, rest assured they will go to whatever lengths necessary to surround themselves with people who will lose their money for them.” Read more »

“A nun from the orphanage called my parents and told them there was a two-week-old baby girl available…The next morning they picked me up from Catholic Social Services, named me after the Kiss song “Beth,” which was playing on the radio, left me with Aunt Bonnie, and took off to Vegas.”

Read more »

This is a friendly reminder that The Rumpus has an amazing book club of which you can be a part! The club is on its third book, Richard Yates by Tao Lin, which will ship out in just a couple of weeks.

As I think about my own, mildly successful, book club beginnings that happen in my living room where only three people have read through a 90-page book, I am impressed and inspired by the size of The Rumpus’ club, the amazing books they send out, and the online conversations that ensue. You can engage in online chats with readers and authors without even getting out of bed.

The most recent news is that there is a Rumpus Poetry Book Club, as well. It functions just like the book club–one new book each month that ships out to members. The first poetry club selection is Ceiling of Sticks by Shane Book.

“I’ve never been money-driven. But I saw [Trader Monthly] as a way to do what I love–journalism–and maybe do well and be successful financially. I thought I could have it both ways.”

Few journalists this side of Truman Capote have entered the writing business with aspirations of eating fois gras canapés and drinking 18-year Chivas in the grand ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, surrounded by throngs of models and multimillionaires. Randall Lane certainly didn’t. But in November of 2004, when Lane and his business partner launched Trader Monthly, a magazine for Wall Street’s biggest rainmakers (motto: “See it, make it, spend it”), they found themselves surrounded by profligacy in all its forms–$175 hamburgers topped with black truffles, $10,000 Carl F. Bucherer watches, $6,000 lap-dance sessions at the Penthouse Executive Club. Suddenly, Lane had a front-row seat for the financial industry’s golden era of shameless spending and unchecked egos. Read more »

Memoirville recommends… an interview on Bookslut with Debra Monroe, author of a new memoir entitled On the Outskirts of Normal: Forging a Family Against the Grain.

Monroe’s memoir is her story of motherhood, transracial adoption, unstable relationships, and life in rural Texas. This interview focuses on storytelling, genre, and the struggles of autobiographical writing. The author continually tries to state that her story is not predominantly about race–white mother with black daughter–by saying things like, “Does anyone think about their race all day every day? I don’t, and my daughter doesn’t give many indications she does.” It’s a curious statement that makes me, all at once, want to read her memoir, cringe for her daughter’s sake, and imagine what kind of story her daughter will write years from now.

“I’ve found that all the exposure, all that radical honesty that really is writing a book about your life [and] having been very public with it, is nothing I could have prepared for.”

Hooker. Prostitute. Sex worker. Whore. Our language reflects beliefs about women who exchange sex for money. Meet Jillian Lauren. As a teen, she fled suburban life in New Jersey to live among the twinkling jewels, wads of cash, and sparing concubines of Brunei’s Royal family. Her prince: His Royal Highness Jefri Bolkiah. Hardly a fairytale, New York Times bestselling memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem intoxicatingly lures readers along a siren’s tale of heart break, lust, love, and redemption. Read more »

With summer in full swing and the World Cup coming to a close it’s time to put together a hearty summer reading list, hit the beach, and jump in the water every 50 pages or so. Below is a roundup of memoirs recommended by SMITH for your summer enjoyment, almost all of which share a similar theme around journeys of one stripe or another . Click on the title below for SMITH Mag’s interview with each author.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
What happens when, as a grown woman, you return to live with your parents in a strictly conservative Mennonite community? Janzen writes about what led her back home and her experiences re-entering a world she had left behind. Bonus: This unlikely tale is a NYT bestseller.

Orange is the New Black: My Life Inside a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman
Kerman details not only the events that led to her year long imprisonment, but also provides an intimate account of her days inside prison and the women with whom she befriended and lived. Bonus/full disclosure: Kerman’s husband is that handsome SMITH Mag founder, Larry Smith. Read more »

“I was possibly more honest than I needed to be. It’s really hard trying to scrutinize your own motives and your own limitations as a human being while also banging your head against your limitations as a writer.”

During a work trip to Manhattan one afternoon a few years ago, book critic Hephzibah Anderson found herself doing a double-take on Fifth Avenue: was that her college ex-boyfriend walking into DeBeers, next to a fetching blonde—presumably to buy an engagement ring? A guy she’d only seen once—an ocean away, in their native London—since their breakup ten years earlier? The only guy who’d said the words “I love you” to Anderson? Read more »

“I think my Dad has written about seventy eleven ‘anonymous’ positive reviews online by now. It’s possible that he is the only person on Earth who has actually purchased the audio book, just so that he can hear about himself as he reads about himself.”

It’s hard not to be jealous of Samantha Bee. As a correspondent for The Daily Show, she writes, performs, and humiliates hypocrites, plus works with Jon Stewart as well as her own hot husband, whom she met in the touring company of a live-action Sailor Moon musical. I know, right!? Plus, she’s raising happy, normal-seeming kids, and found enough time to herself to write a brand new book. Read more »