Augusten Burroughs

Writer Augusten Burroughs is the author of two best-selling, often bitingly funny memoirs. In his first, Running With Scissors, he recalled his mentally ill mother, who gave him away to her equally mentally ill shrink — who then adopted him. Of that experience, Burroughs wrote, "I then lived a life of squalor, pedophiles, no schools and free pills." His second memoir, Dry, was about getting sober in a 28-day stay at a gay alcoholism-rehab center. Burroughs' new book is a collection of stories, Magical Thinking.