Jennifer Finney Boylan
Author of the bestselling memoir She's Not There, President of PEN America, and celebrated LGBTQ activist
Garrard Conley
Author of the bestselling memoir Boy Erased
Photo credit: Collin Boyd Shafer
Garrard Conley is author of the acclaimed memoir Boy Erased, which has been translated in over a dozen languages and is now a major motion picture. An accomplished speaker, Conley travels the country lecturing on compassion, the therapeutic benefits of writing, and the complex issues surrounding the American South.
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About Garrard Conley
Garrard Conley is the author of the acclaimed memoir Boy Erased, a beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love and understanding. Now a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, and Lucas Hedges, directed by Joel Edgerton. “Every sentence of the story will stir your soul” (O Magazine).
Coming of age as the son of a Baptist pastor in rural Arkansas, Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted by his sexuality; he had never even met another gay person. At age nineteen, his worst fear came true when he was outed to his parents. They gave him an ultimatum: he could either be shipped to a “conversion therapy” facility in a hope to “cure” him of his homosexuality, or he would lose his family, his friends, and his God. He chose the facility, a decision that would lead him through a brutally institutional Twelve-Step Program. He was supposed to emerge cleansed of impure urges, stronger in his Christian faith, and—most importantly—heterosexual. Instead, Conley developed the strength to search for his true identity and to forgive his family.
Conley’s bestselling memoir, Boy Erased, traces the complex relationships between identity, faith, and community in a testament to the tenacity of love. A humane, poetic glimpse at a world hidden to many, Conley shows all sides of his family—good and bad—with courage and compassion, even as he depicts his own heartbreaking story of survival.
Boy Erased thrust Conley onto the national stage as the public gained increasing awareness of conversion therapy facilities, which he furthers through his work as one of the creators and produces of the podcast UnErased, which explores the history of conversion therapy in America through interviews, historical documents, and archival materials provided by the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C.
A popular speaker, he lectures at schools and venues across the country on radical compassion, writing through trauma, and what it means to grow up gay in the South. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Elizabeth Kostova Foundation Writers’ Conferences and has facilitated classes for Catapult, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown. He is also currently the memoir instructor for GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator program. His work can be found in TIME, VICE, CNN, BuzzFeed, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Huffington Post, among other places, and he was recently named a Lambda Award Finalist for memoir/autobiography. He lives in New York.
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Speaking Topics
Radical Compassion
What do we do when fundamentalist thinking damages our understanding of compassion and goodness? Garrard Conley shares stories from his memoir, Boy Erased, about growing up in a fundamentalist household and attending a conversion therapy program. In the midst of harmful practices and intense bigotry, Conley dug deep to find compassion for himself and even for the counselors who harmed him. After over a decade of recovery, he now shares some of his insights on human nature.
Writing through Trauma
How do we come to terms with and write about traumatic events? Can writing become a form of therapy? For memoirist Garrard Conley, the process took over 10 years, several trips to his hometown, and interviews with people who had once harmed him. Conley shares the strengths and pitfalls of his experience, along with the unexpected benefits that emerged only after he had shared his story with others.
The Complicated South
The son of a Baptist preacher, memoirist Garrard Conley grew up gay in rural Arkansas. His experience attending an “ex-gay” conversion therapy facility, followed by years of strained relationships with his family, led him to a unique and complicated understanding of the South. Through interviews with family members, former “ex-gay” therapists, psychologists, and advocates, Conley has developed new insights into what it means to be Southern in the 21st century.
Literature's Role in Inspiring Empathy
Growing up the son of a Baptist preacher, memoirist Garrard Conley lived eighteen years of his life with a fundamentalist black-and-white worldview. After he was outed as gay, he was forced to attend harmful “ex-gay” conversion therapy. Afterwards, Conley began to read classic literature with abandon, a process that healed many of his wounds and unlocked his potential for critical thinking. Charting lessons learned from books like The Scarlet Letter and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Conley sheds light on the ways literature can lead to an empathetic, inclusive worldview.
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Praise for Garrard Conley
Praise for Boy Erased
Exceptionally well-written… This timely addition to the debate on conversion therapy will build sympathy for both children and parents who avail themselves of it while still showing how damaging it can be.
— Publishers WeeklyClosely observed feelings are the fuel that drives this complex coming-of-age account… Moving and thought provoking.
— BooklistIn a sharp and shocking debut memoir, Conley digs deep into the ex-gay therapy system… An engaging memoir that will inevitably make readers long for a more equal future.
— Kirkus ReviewsBoy Erased isn’t a smug tale of liberal awakening: Conley is frank and articulate about the sense of loss that has come with denying his religion and, as a consequence, the family he still loves…[Conley’s] writerly eye often wanders outside non-fiction’s usual constraints. Writing stories is the work he wants to do; this book is clearly the work he needed to do.
— Toronto StarWell-written, compelling, disturbing, and ultimately quite bracing, this is an important, refreshingly unsentimental perspective on the dangers and abuses of ex-gay therapy ministries.
— Bay Area ReporterBoy Erased is a gut-punch of a memoir, but the miracle of this book is the generosity with which Conley writes in an effort to understand the circumstances and motivations that led his family to seek the “cure”… his memoir is not simply a story of survival — in this book, a true writer comes of age. Conley writes vividly, with intelligence, wit, and genuine empathy. By embracing complexity and compassion, he reclaims his life and reminds us that a story rarely belongs to one person alone.
— LA Review of BooksA brave, powerful meditation on identity and faith, Boy Erased is the story of one man’s journey to accepting himself and overcoming shame and trauma in the midst of deep-rooted bigotry.
— Buzzfeed (Buzzfeed’s Hot Summer Reads)This brave and bracing memoir is an urgent reminder that America remains a place where queer people have to fight for their lives. It’s also a generous portrait of a family in which the myths of prejudice give way before the reality of love. Equal parts sympathy and rage, Boy Erased is a necessary, beautiful book.
— Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to YouThe power of Conley’s story resides not only in the vividly depicted grotesqueries of the therapy system, but in his lyrical writing about sexuality and love, and his reflections on the Southern family and culture that shaped him.
— Los Angeles Times[A] powerful convergence of events that Conley portrays eloquently.
— The Washington Post...[Conley's] memoir is not simply a story of survival—in this book, a true writer comes of age. Conley writes vividly, with intelligence, wit, and genuine empathy. By embracing complexity and compassion, he reclaims his life and reminds us that a story rarely belongs to one person alone.
— LA Review of BooksThis brave and bracing memoir is an urgent reminder that America remains a place where queer people have to fight for their lives. It’s also a generous portrait of a family in which the myths of prejudice give way before the reality of love. Equal parts sympathy and rage, Boy Erased is a necessary, beautiful book.
— Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You -
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All the World Beside Me
“A gorgeous, spellbinding work of historical fiction that conjures up a society wrestling with faith, love, and a sense of belonging. It is a heartbreaking account of forbidden passions and lost innocence told with intimate, lyrical beauty. It is truly sublime. I loved it.”
—Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo
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