The Aftermath of JT LeRoy

If you ever had a doubt that the woman who made up JT LeRoy was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, read this NYTimes piece. From the article:

In the last two years Laura Albert has lost, in no particular order, her livelihood, her boyfriend, a piece of her identity, quite possibly her apartment and a civil fraud trial in Manhattan this spring, enacted, more or less, because she signed a movie contract with her nom de plume.
That, of course, was JT LeRoy, who served for years as her literary double and imaginary envoy to the world. As bookish folks have known for almost two years JT (a supposed addict, androgyne and son of a West Virginia prostitute) rose to stardom at the end of the millennium then fell from grace, shot down as a hoax.

Moral of the story: When writing fiction, make up the characters, not the author.