In the third and final part of my interview with Gary Lippman, we cover a wide range of topics, including authors Tom Robbins and Thomas Pynchon; the wisdom of Mae West; Gary’s love of storytelling, which he sees as also informing the song lyrics he’s been writing for musicians Steve Nieve and Simon Kirke – they’re “ultimately stories,” Gary insists; his “preoccupation with death” and what it means to live, Gary’s commitment to work because “there’s no time to waste”; and the influence of singer-songwriter Bob Neuwirth, Gary’s “great mentor” along with Robbins.
Laura Albert has won international acclaim for her fiction. Writing as JT LeRoy, she is the author of the best-selling novels Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and the novella Harold's End. Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, reissued by HarperCollins, have also been released as audiobooks by Blackstone Publishing. Laura Albert is the subject of Jeff Feuerzeig's feature documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story and Lynn Hershman Leeson's film The Ballad of JT LeRoy. She has written for The New York Times, The Forward, The London Times, Spin, Man About Town, Vogue, Film Comment, Interview, L'Équipe Sport&Style, Filmmaker, I-D, and others – more recently, the cover article for Man About Town and her reflections on fashion for VESTOJ. A writer for the HBO series "Deadwood," she also wrote the original script for Gus Van Sant's Elephant and was the film's Associate Producer. She has written the short films Radiance for Drew Lightfoot and ContentMode, and Dreams of Levitation and Warfare of Pageantry for Sharif Hamza and Nowness. For Tiempo de Literatura 2020's “The Narrative Universe of Laura Albert,” she engaged in a wide-ranging ZOOM conversation with Fernanda Melchor, International Booker Prize Shortlist author for her acclaimed novel Hurricane Season.
Twitter: @lauraalbert
Instagram: @laura_albert