Augusten Burroughs

This is the 7th post in our Author of the Week series.



Augusten Burroughs was born in 1965 in Pennsylvania. He was born as Christopher Robinson. His parents divorced in 1978 after years of dysfunction and Augusten was placed in the care of his mother's psychiatrist.

He dropped out of school in the 6th grade but then attained his GED at the age of 17. He went on to community college before moving to New York where he held a successful career at an advertising agency.

In 1996 he was sent to a treatment center for alcoholism.

In 2000 he wrote his first novel entitled Sellevision which is currently being made into a movie.

It was in 2002 that he wrote and published his first memoir Running with Scissors. It detailed many of his experiences as a child and even spurred some controversy. A neighboring family that is mentioned in the book as The Finches (they are really the Turcottes) contested that the book was largely sensationalized and false. They took Augusten to court where the judge ruled in his favor and the book remains the same as it was when it was first published. In fact the memoir became so popular that it was turned into a movie with the same name.

In 2003, he followed Running with Scissors with Dry which detailed his life before and after alcohol treatment. He also published two collections of memoir essays entitled Magical Thinking (2003) and Possible Side Effects (2006).

In 2008, Augusten Burroughs published A Wolf on the Table which details his relationship with his father. The book caught the attention of movie studios even before it was published and the rights were purchased by Universal Studios and Red Wagon Productions.

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