Jeanne Darst

Fiction Ruined My Family (Riverhead Books)

A launch party for local author Jeanne Darst and her debut book, the memoir Fiction Ruined My Family. "Fiction Ruined My Family had me laughing out loud, which I almost never do, with one jaw-dropping scene after another. On nearly every page there's some sentence that's so perfect, in an old-school Oscar Wilde/Dorothy Parker sort of way, that it made everything I've ever written or said seem like dull, drunken mumbling." --Ira Glass, host of "This American Life" "Dazzlingly funny, gut wrenching and infested with writing that will absolutely floor you. Fiction Ruined My Family has ruined me--how will I ever be able to use those adjectives again and mean them as much as I do now?" --Sloane Crosley, author of How Did You Get This Number Jeanne Darst is a writer/performer who has written for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, and has performed her solo plays in bars, barns, and living rooms across the United States. An excerpt from Fiction Ruined My Family aired on This American Life. She lives in Los Angeles. Photo of the author by Cory Lashever. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 14, 2011.