Augusten Burroughs
Burroughs in 2008
Born	Christopher Robison October 23, 1965 (1965-10-23) (age 43) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Screenwriter, memoirist, essayist.
Nationality	American
Writing period	present
Subjects	Memoir, humor
Notable work(s)	Running with Scissors
Official website

Augusten Xon Burroughs (born Christopher Robison on October 23, 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American writer known for his New York Times bestselling memoir Running with Scissors (2002), which spawned a feature film of the same name.

Biography

Burroughs is the son of poet and writer Margaret Robison and the late John G. Robison, head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also the younger brother of John Elder Robison. When he was 12, his mother sent him to live with her psychiatrist's family in western Massachusetts.

His books are published by St. Martin's Press (hardcover) and Picador (trade paperback). Some of his childhood experiences were chronicled in Running with Scissors, which was later developed into a film.

Augusten Burroughs discusses his road to writing, sobriety and the Turcottes over dinner in the East Village.

Augusten Burroughs, New York City, 2007.

Burroughs dropped out of school after sixth grade, and obtained a GED at age 17. He worked his way up to a high-paying job in the advertising industry before leaving the field to become a writer. His written work blends the fantastic and the mundane, and is delivered in a matter-of-fact style. In addition to Scissors, Burroughs penned a second memoir, Dry (2003), about his experience during and after treatment for alcoholism. That was followed by two collections of essays, Magical Thinking (2003) and Possible Side Effects (2006). His first book, the novel Sellevision (2000), is currently in production as a feature film.¹²

Burroughs' writing pokes fun at subjects such as advertising, psychiatrists, religious families, and home shopping networks. It has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, House and Garden, BlackBook Magazine, New York, The Times, Bark, Attitude, and Out. Burroughs writes a monthly column for Details. Early in his career, he was a regular commentator on NPR's Morning Edition.

Burroughs has been profiled in People, The Guardian, and Entertainment Weekly, where he ranked 15 on the 2005 list of "The 25 Funniest People in America" and was named to the magazine's "It List".

Wikinews has related news: Augusten Burroughs on addiction, writing, his family and his new book

In 2005, Universal Studios and Red Wagon Productions bought the rights to a film based on a then-unreleased memoir about Burroughs' relationship with his father. The book, called A Wolf at the Table, was released on April 29, 2008.

Burroughs lives in New York City and Amherst, Massachusetts, with his partner, Dennis Pilsits, and their French bulldogs, Bentley and The Cow.³

Controversy

In August 2007, Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, settled with the Turcotte family, who stated that they were the basis for the Finch family portrayed in the book. The Turcottes, who alleged that Running with Scissors was largely fictional⁵ and written in a sensational manner, sought damages of $2 million for invasion of privacy, defamation, and emotional distress. Burroughs defended his work as "entirely accurate", but agreed to call the work a "book" (instead of "memoir") in the author's note, to alter the acknowledgments page in future editions to recognize the Turcotte family's conflicting memories of described events, and express regret for "any unintentional harm" to the Turcotte family.⁶ Burroughs felt vindicated by the settlement. "I'm not at all sorry that I wrote [the book]. And you know, the suit settled-- it settled in my favor. I didn't change a word of the memoir, not one word of it. It's still a memoir, it's marketed as a memoir, [the Turcottes] agreed one hundred percent that it is a memoir."⁴

Upon settling the Running With Scissors case in August 2007, Burroughs stated, "I consider this not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side."⁷

Bibliography

References

External links

• Augusten Burroughs' Personal Site
• Dr. Rodolph Turcotte's Site ('Dr Finch')
• Dr. John G. Robison (Burroughs' Father)
• Burroughs' mother - a poet and author
• The Memory Addict, a New York Magazine profile of Augusten Burroughs.
• Augusten Burroughs' Mother Speaks Out at NPR
• Ruthless with Scissors Vanity Fair article that describes interviews with Turcotte family.
• Washington Post article "Growing Up Truly Absurd."
• One hour interview with Victoria Lautman-Writers on the Record
• Augusten Burroughs reads A Wolf at the Table in New York

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 30 December 2008, at 21:25.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by PediaView.com. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with PediaView.com.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Augusten Burroughs".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://pediaview.com/openpedia/Augusten_Burroughs

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.