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December 2, 2008 10:19:42 PM CST


Margaret Seltzer

Margaret Seltzer news stories

2 Stories

 How to Fake a Memoir 

Embellish the story without getting caught, Slate scribe suggests

(Newser) - Misha Defonseca's memoir left a sticky trail of lies about escaping Nazis and living with wolves. (It turns out wolf saliva isn't an antiseptic.) Tired of careless fabricators, Slate writes a how-to for aspiring fakers: Keep it vague. Dates are verifiable—"awhile" is not. Watch out for tattling siblings. Revenge can be dirty, especially if you kill them off in your faux memoir (as Margaret Seltzer recently discovered). Check your paper trail. That goes for elementary school registers, which gave away Defonseca's real whereabouts. More »

More about:  memoir humor author James Frey Margaret Seltzer fake memoirs

Gang Memoir Exposed
as Fiction

Author of Love and Consequences fesses up to fabricating

(Newser) - Margaret Jones' acclaimed memoir of a half-Native American girl growing up in a foster home in South Central LA and running with gangs, Love and Consequences, turns out to be fiction, the New York Times reports. Jones, whose real name is Seltzer, grew up with her birth parents in an affluent LA neighborhood; she was busted when her sister spotted her photo in a Times feature about the book and called her publisher. More »

More about:  Los Angeles book publishing memoir author gangs fiction Penguin Group Margaret Seltzer South Central LA fabrication

2 Stories

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