63 articles
Jimmy Keene
Jimmy Keene, or James Keene, is an American author and former drug dealer who went undercover in prison to elicit a confession from suspected serial killer Larry Hall.
John Perkins (author)
John Perkins is an American author and critic who served as a chief economist from 1971 to 1981. His 2004 book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, details his work.
Karrine Steffans
Karrine Steffans, pen name of Elisabeth Ovesen (born 1978, St. Thomas), is a former hip-hop video dancer nicknamed Superhead whose 2005 New York Times bestselling memoir Confessions of a Video Vixen named celebrity lovers; she retired the pen name in 2015.
Lara Love Hardin
Lara Love Hardin, American literary agent, ghostwriter, and author; founder of True Literary, ex-co-CEO of Idea Architects; wrote The Sun Does Shine and the memoir The Many Lives of Mama Love, a 2024 Oprah's Book Club pick.
Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic from Bishop's Lynn, Norfolk, whose dictated Book is the first known English autobiography.
Mark Judge (writer)
Mark Judge (Mark Gauvreau Judge, born 1964) is an American writer in Washington, D.C., author of the alcoholism memoir Wasted, Damn Senators, and God and Man at Georgetown Prep, and Brett Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate named in the 2018 Ford allegation.
Mark Wales
Mark Wales is an Australian former SAS troop commander, 16-year military veteran with four Afghanistan deployments (2006-2010), author of Survivor: Life in the SAS (2021), Wharton MBA, McKinsey consultant, Kill Kapture founder, and winner of Australian Survivor: Blood V Water 2022.
Mary Karr
Mary Karr (born 1955) is an American poet and memoirist from East Texas, author of The Liars' Club, Cherry, Lit, and The Art of Memoir, Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.
Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom (born 1958, Passaic, New Jersey), American author and Detroit Free Press sports columnist; wrote Tuesdays with Morrie (1997), the bestselling memoir, plus novels like The Five People You Meet in Heaven; founder of SAY Detroit and the Have Faith Haiti orphanage.
Mohamed Choukri
Mohamed Choukri (محمد شكري) was a Moroccan writer of Amazigh origin, best known for the autobiographical novel Al-Khubz al-Hafi, or For Bread Alone, an account of poverty in Morocco.
Molly Bloom (author)
Molly Bloom, the "Poker Princess," is the American author of the 2014 memoir Molly's Game about running high-stakes celebrity poker games in Los Angeles and New York, adapted into Aaron Sorkin's 2017 Oscar-nominated film.
Naomi Swartzentruber
Naomi Swartzentruber (born 1980) is an ex-Amish American memoirist and influencer (@amishinspiration), distinct from the Odon, Indiana homemaker of the same name. Raised Swartzentruber Amish in Michigan, she left at 17 in 1997, danced for 20 years, and published The Amazing Adventures of an Amish Stripper in 2023.
Neil Strauss
Neil Strauss, American journalist and author of The Game (2005), the bestseller that popularized pick-up artistry under his pseudonym Style; later wrote The Truth (2015) and celebrity memoirs like The Dirt.
Pedro Nava
Pedro Nava (1903–1984) was a Brazilian physician and writer who practiced rheumatology for about fifty years, then won the Machado de Assis Prize for his six-volume memoirs (1972–1983).
Peter FitzSimons
Peter FitzSimons, also Peter John FitzSimons, Australian author, journalist, and former Wallabies lock; wrote Kokoda, Batavia, Gallipoli, Nancy Wake; chaired the Australian Republican Movement 2015-2022.
Philip Caputo
Philip Caputo (1941-2026), American novelist and journalist, Marine lieutenant in early Vietnam, Chicago Tribune Pulitzer co-winner, author of the memoir A Rumor of War and Horn of Africa.
Piper Kerman
Piper Kerman, American author of the 2010 memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, served 13 months of a 15-month sentence at FCI Danbury for money laundering in a drug trafficking scheme; her book became Jenji Kohan's Emmy-winning Netflix series.
Primo Levi
Primo Levi (1919–1987), Italian Jewish chemist and writer, Auschwitz survivor; author of If This Is a Man, The Truce, and The Periodic Table; deported to Auschwitz III-Monowitz in 1944 and later recognized among the twentieth century's major writers.
Qudratullah Shahab
Qudratullah Shahab (قدرت اللہ شہاب) was a Pakistani civil servant, diplomat, and Urdu writer, best known for his autobiography Shahab Nama, one of Urdu's best-selling memoirs.
Rachel DeLoache Williams
Rachel DeLoache Williams, American writer and former Vanity Fair photo editor from Knoxville, Tennessee; author of My Friend Anna (2019) about Anna Sorokin, whom she helped police arrest in 2017 after a $62,000 Marrakech trip.
Rachel Jeffs
Rachel Jeffs is a daughter of FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs who left the church with her five children in 2014 and wrote the 2017 memoir Breaking Free.
Richard O'Rawe
Richard O'Rawe, Belfast-born former IRA prisoner and PRO for the 1981 hunger strikers in the Maze H-Blocks; author of Blanketmen (2005) and Afterlives (2010) alleging the IRA leadership vetoed a deal to end the strike, plus crime novels and Gerry Conlon biography.
Sarah Winnemucca
Sarah Winnemucca, Paiute name Thocmetony, was a Northern Paiute author and interpreter whose 1883 book Life Among the Piutes was the first autobiography by a Native American woman.
Sergey Aksakov
Sergey Aksakov (Сергей Аксаков; 1791 to 1859) was a Russian writer and critic known for his autobiographical Family Chronicle trilogy, nature writing, and the fairy tale The Scarlet Flower.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee, born 1970 in New Delhi, is an Indian-American oncologist, Columbia University associate professor, and author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, plus The Gene and The Song of the Cell.
Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad, American Emmy-winning journalist and author of Between Two Kingdoms and The Book of Alchemy; wrote the NYT column Life, Interrupted during leukemia treatment diagnosed at 22, with 2022 recurrence, Isolation Journals newsletter, and the Oscar-nominated documentary American Symphony with husband Jon Batiste.
Susannah Cahalan
Susannah Cahalan, American journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire (2012), about her anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis; also The Great Pretender (2019) and The Acid Queen (2025).
Tara Westover
Tara Westover (born 1986) is an American historian and memoirist, author of the 2018 memoir Educated about her survivalist Mormon Idaho childhood and Cambridge PhD; her second memoir, Brothers and Sisters, is due April 2027.
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain (1893–1970), English feminist, pacifist, and author of the First World War memoir Testament of Youth (1933); Somerville College VAD nurse who lost her fiancé, brother, and two friends, and joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1937.
Wang Dingjun
Wang Dingjun (王鼎钧, born April 1925) is a Chinese-language essayist from Linyi, Shandong, regarded as a leading figure of modern Chinese prose and a master of the memoir.