The out author responsible for the bestselling memoir Running with Scissors and four best-selling autobiographies is making his debut appearance in Nashville.
The Brooks Fund recently announced that New York Times best-selling author Augusten Burroughs will visit Music City for a reading, discussion and booksigning featuring his latest bestseller A Wolf at the Table on Wednesday, April 8.
This event will be held at Ingram Hall at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music at 7 p.m.
Burroughs has twice been honored by Entertainment Weekly as one of 25 funniest people in America and the personal stories of his life have been embraced by readers throughout the world. But the credibility of his extreme stories has also been questioned by critics.
Burroughs has no formal education beyond elementary school, led a very successful advertising copywriter for over seventeen years and nearly died from alcoholism in 1999. That's when he began his first novel without an outline or structure, and finished it within seven days. It was published one year later and is in development as a feature film.
His second book, Running with Scissors, was released in 2001 to virtually unanimous critical acclaim and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years, eight months of which were spent in the #1 position. The film, starring Annette Benning, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jill Clayburgh and Alec Baldwin was released in 2005.
He has since published four additional autobiographical volumes (Dry, Possible Side Effects, Magical Thinking and A Wolf at the Table), all of them bestsellers. Currently published in over thirty countries, Burroughs' book readings have become massively popular events on numerous continents.
He has also headlined for the most prestigious literary festivals in the world, most recently the 2008 Melbourne writer's Festival, where he and Germaine Greer delivered the keynote addresses on opening night. In addition, Burroughs speaks regularly at colleges and universities on topics ranging from alcoholism and sexual abuse to the art of authoring one's own life and humor as serious medicine.
Far from the comedy fans expected from the author, the brutal and dark A Wolf at the Table shocked fans and critics after it was released in early 2008 to some of the worst -and best- reviews of the author's career. It remains Burroughs' bestselling hardcover to date.