Gangbanger Memoir Scandal Grows

Posted on March 5, 2008

The faux gangbanger memoir story continues to percolate . Some commentators are being pretty harsh on Random House for having two of these disasters -- the other one was the James Frey incident. But publicity director Marilyn Ducksworth issued a statement today saying that the company did vet Margaret B. Jones aka Margaret Seltzer. Seltzer showed lots of evidence to prove her story was real: letters, clippings and the like. She even went so far as to have friends (or actors, it's not clear) pretend to be the foster siblings to convince Seltzer's agent that her story was real.

"Riverhead relies on authors to tell us the truth," Marilyn Ducksworth, executive director of publicity, said in a statement. "Indeed, an author promises us the truth in their publishing agreement. When it became known that the author was misrepresenting her personal story, we took it seriously, moved very quickly and attempted to corroborate new information we were presented with."
The latest scandal came despite the efforts of Seltzer's editors, who fact-checked the story. Riverhead said Seltzer's duplicity included bogus photos, letters and even fake foster siblings, whom she produced to verify her story. The hoax demonstrates the difficulty publishers face in separating truth from fiction in memoirs.

In this author photo by Susan Seubert, Margaret Seltzer poses with a bandanna that she claims was the "flag" or gang emblem of a friend who died from gang violence. This Seltzer woman is in the wrong business: she's clearly a grifter, not a writer.

This is really bad news for any new author who's pitching an interesting memoir. It's entirely likely that the publishers will demand all kinds of proof that the story isn't just made up. What a pain.