The Lie: A Memoir

Elyssa Goodman is a New York-based writer and photographer. She is a regular contributor to Conde Nast’s them and Carine Roitfeld’s CR Fashion Book. Her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and many more. Photography clients and publications include Awkwafina, Sephora,  The New Yorker, VICE, Artforum, and Cosmopolitan, among others. In New York, she hosts The Miss Manhattan Non-Fiction Reading, which has been featured in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

William Dameron is an award-winning blogger, memoirist, and essayist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Salon, the Huffington Post, Saranac Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and in the book Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi & Trans Men Who Came Out Later in Life. He is an IT director for a global economic consulting firm, where he educates users on the perils of social engineering in cybersecurity. He is the author of The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out (Little A), a candid memoir of denial, stolen identities, betrayal, faking it, and coming out. In this emotional and unflinchingly honest memoir of coming out of the closet late in life, owning up to the past, and facing the future, William Dameron confronts steroid addiction, the shame and homophobia of his childhood, the sledgehammer of secrets that slowly tore his marriage apart, and his love for a gay father of three that would once again challenge the boundaries of trust. At the true heart of The Lie is a universal story about turning self-doubt into self-acceptance and about pain, anger, and the long journey of both seeking and giving forgiveness. The New York Times writes that it is, “Compelling…Darkly animated…Tamps down the tall grass of untold experience.”