Laura Albert - Authorship Controversy

Authorship Controversy

In a New York magazine article in October 2005, Stephen Beachy suggested that LeRoy was a literary hoax created by Albert. Beachy suggested that Albert was not only LeRoy's friend Emily Frasier, but also Speedie, LeRoy's street-hustling friend, as well as LeRoy himself. Albert has since confirmed that she is the writer behind the LeRoy books.

Investigation showed that the advance for LeRoy's first novel, Sarah, was paid to Laura Albert's sister, JoAnna Albert, and that further payments to LeRoy were made to a Nevada corporation, Underdogs Inc., whose president is Carolyn F. Albert, Laura Albert's mother.

The New York Times published an article about Disneyland Paris with the JT LeRoy byline in the Sunday magazine T:Travel supplement in September 2005. After the publication of the New York article, the Times found that expense receipts included an Air France itinerary for three people instead of the four described in the article. Employees at Disneyland Paris and two Paris hotels confirmed that the person claiming to be JT LeRoy matched photographs of Laura Albert, who told the employees she was traveling with her husband and son. She told hotel employees who thought JT LeRoy was male that she was a transsexual woman who had sex reassignment surgery three years earlier.

A 9 January 2006 article in the New York Times gave evidence that the role of LeRoy was played publicly by Savannah Knoop, the half-sister of Albert's partner. Geoffrey Knoop later stated Albert was the author of the JT LeRoy works. Albert explained the circumstances of JT's existence in a Fall 2006 Paris Review interview with Nathaniel Rich.