The magic of memoirs lies in the way they encourage the author to delve deeply in to personal experiences, excavating truths they may not have discovered otherwise, as well as allowing to reader to experience the author’s truth alongside the author. If you love exploring true stories directly from the people who experienced them, don’t miss these truly exceptional memoirs coming to booksellers in 2023.
Spare by Prince Harry (1/10)
In this honest and powerful memoir, Prince Harry shares the story of his life after the death of his mother, the beloved Princess Diana. Only 12 years old at the time, millions mourned alongside Harry and wondered how he and his brother would cope with this loss—and what it would mean for their futures. Insightful, compelling, and unflinchingly truthful, Harry’s story is a poignant depiction of love, grief and resilience.
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Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman (1/10)
Renowned collegiate athlete and national champion Lauren Fleshman is taking a stand for young women in the sporting world. Fleshman’s experiences coaching young female runners and representing brands like Nike and Oiselle have exposed her to all of the ways in which our sports systems work against women. She discusses injuries, eating disorders, and mental health struggles that many female athletes experience as they attempt to push through natural dips in performance after a certain age. She also shares her own stories of how she fell in love with running, pushed her limits, and sustained multiple catastrophic injuries. Both a memoir and a call to action to rebuild the world of competitive sports, Good for a Girl is uplifting, inspiring, and revelatory.
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Call Me Anne by Anne Heche (1/24)
In this personal, vulnerable and post-humous memoir, Emmy-award winning actress Anne Heche opens up about her rise to fame. She includes details about her time working with Harrison Ford, her relationship with Ellen Degeneres, her experience with Harvey Weinstein, her childhood history of sexual abuse, her relationship with God, and her journey of self-love. Also included are poems and exercises that helped Anne through hard times. Along with personal anecdotes, Anne encourages readers to embark on their own journey of self-love and acceptance.
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Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir by Iliana Regan (1/24)
Iliana Regan’s successful debut Burn the Place helped Iliana and her new wife, Anna, create a culinary destination located in Michigan, the Milkweed Inn. Here, Regan forages a lot of the food, and has been given the chance to return to their rural roots. The youngest of three older sisters, Regan’s childhood relationships were shaped by her childhood identification as a boy. Treating her like the son he never had, Regan’s father would take her foraging and fishing, sharing stories of his own parents as she got older. Regan learns to navigate Michigan’s boreal forest, trying to conceive a child, and keeping a new business afloat during the peak of the pandemic, all while loggers decimate surrounding areas.
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Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson (1/31)
This unforgettable memoir by actress/model Pamela Anderson reveals personal truths about her life before superstardom, her rise to fame, and her time in the spotlight. Growing up in Vancouver, Pamela was initially a shy girl with a deep love of nature and a powerful imagination—which is what eventually led to her glamorous life in Hollywood. But along with the glamour came the struggles of maintaining her image during a time when paparazzi was determined to destroy it. Resolute and resilient, Pamela continued to push through the dark side of fame, seeking comfort in art and literature. Now a devoted mother, activist, and Broadway performer, Pamela is sharing her journey of growth and self-discovery.
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Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Toshio Meronek and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1/31)
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy has lived a legendary life seeking justice, survival and freedom. A lifetime of struggle as a transgender and activist, having participated in the Stonewall Riots, living through the HIV/AIDS crisis, and helping found one of America’s first needle exchange programs from the back of her van, this book showcases a woman in search of trans liberation, as well as collective liberation. Miss Major Speaks is a documentation of these struggles, a roadmap for the challenges that Black, brown, queer, and trans youth will face, told through intimacy and offering a vision of hope.
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Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H (2/7)
Born in South Asia, Lamya H has always felt out of place in the Middle East. When she realizes she has a crush on her female teacher at age fourteen, she does everything she can to hide her feelings. Lamya learns the story of Maryam in Quran class, and how she insisted she had never been touched by a man, and yet was pregnant. From that moment, Lamya wondered if they were similar. She soon uses other famous stories from the Quran, making sense of her life and her choices by owning her queerness, and figuring out what it means for her to be a devout Muslim immigrant.
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My What If Year: A Memoir by Alisha Fernandez Miranda (2/7)
CEO of her own consulting firm, Alisha Fernandez Miranda is almost forty, at the peak of her personal and professional success. Exhausted, Miranda decides to take a break, pausing her career. When her family, husband and eight-year-old twins, hesitantly give their blessing for her to explore her dream jobs for a year, she leaves her home in London in search of the answers to “What If?” What ensues is a hilarious journey that involves yoga, million-dollar artwork, and Broadway as we experience what it means to always have a beginner’s mind, and never say no to second chances.
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The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival by Bozoma Saint John (2/21)
Live life urgently: Even in her brokenness, that is Bozoma Saint John’s main goal when she loses her husband, Peter, to cancer. Knowing his cancer was terminal, Peter gave Bozoma a list of two things: cancel their divorce and fix the wrongs immediately. But Bozoma is no stranger to adversity, having lost her college boyfriend to suicide, an interracial marriage, a premature child, and a separation from Peter. Through outstanding courage, she navigates multiple griefs, while holding strong to her desire for a remarkable life.
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A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (4/4)
After fleeing from her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown to an East Coast university, Nicole Chung finally found a sense of community she’d always wanted as an Asian American adoptee. But as her life progresses, the middle-class world she begins to raise a family in—large homes and disposable income—is much different from what she thought was her middle-class childhood, where people often live paycheck to paycheck and safety nets hard to come by. When a family death and cancer diagnosis brings up deep feelings of rage at the lack of accessibility to health care and financial instability, Chung explores class, inequality and grief in this searing memoir.
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The Big Reveal by Sasha Velour (4/4)
Crafting together real life stories with rich queer history, The Big Reveal is a celebration of an expressive art form and the ways it has revolutionized over time. As Sasha Velour uncovers her life and journey as a drag queen, she weaves herself into the history of it, revealing how she learned the craft while bringing substance to our understanding of queer liberation.
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Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera (4/25)
Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero but renamed by the entertainment world, Chita takes us behind the curtain to show how Dolores inspired some of her most famous Broadway roles, and the highs and lows through it all. A front row seat to Chita’s career that gives gratitude to her loyal and longstanding fans, we are invited into rehearsals, on stage, and to work next to some of the greatest talents of their time. Documenting her childhood and heritage as well as her work and career life, Chita shows how she managed to inspire so many people to forge their own unique paths.
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Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto by Zachary Zane (5/9)
In this series of essays, a sex and relationship columnist tells their personal coming out and coming-of-age stories, while also exploring the idea of sex without shame. Even as a young boy, Zachary Zane felt ashamed by the thoughts that popped into his head. Through the lens of self-proclaimed sluttiness and bisexuality, Zane highlights the ways shame negatively impacts our relationships. With essays of personal experience, Boyslut shows how we can begin to detach from the harmful messages that society sends us, and begin to embrace our sexuality to live healthier, happier lives.
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Pageboy by Elliot Page (6/6)
Elliot Page was on the brink of discovering himself as a queer person when the massively successful movie, Juno, came out. Forced to play the role of glossy, young starlet both on and off the screen, Elliot found himself suffocating. Where acting once had been an outlet for his imagination, it soon became a bitter reality, and Elliot felt those dreams of finding himself as a trans person become further out of reach, until enough was enough. With Hollywood behind the scenes and personal insights, Pageboy is a winding journey of what it means to be ourselves when society is trying to create a different version of us.
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A Place for Us by Brandon J. Wolf (6/6)
Brandon Wolf grew up in rural Oregon, grappled by the loss of his mother and the ongoing homophobia and racism within his community. Moving to Orlando, he finally found a community where he felt he belonged, a safe space and a chosen family. When his new normal is shaken up by unimaginable tragedy, the chaos and pain involved gave Brandon a new power, the power of purpose. Turning this purpose into a transformative journey of healing, Wolf showcases the power of community and how there’s hope where there is compassion.
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Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen (7/4)
When Beth Nguyen was just eight months old, her family fled Saigon for America, leaving their mother behind. It wasn’t until Beth was nineteen that they would meet again, and over the course of her adult life, they’ve spent less than twenty-four hours together. Framed through a series of visits between mother and daughter, this memoir explores what it means to be a parent and a refugee, and finding belonging amongst the two.
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If You Would Have Told Me by John Stamos (Fall 2023)
In this long-anticipated memoir, actor John Stamos shares stories of his life that are both heartbreaking and heartening. He discusses Hollywood, fame, fortune, and the mistakes he made along the way, and honors all of the people that helped him become who he is today. Honest and powerful, Stamos encourages readers to find moments of beauty in their own lives, practice gratitude, and trust in something bigger than themselves.
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