Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

“The Tell” never told the whole story

The legal drama around Amy Griffin’s memoir reveals the role of power and wealth in building a bestseller

Published June 25, 2026 12:00PM (EDT)

Last week, news broke that Amy Griffin, author of the 2025 New York Times bestselling memoir “The Tell,” had filed a lawsuit against the anonymous former classmate who, last March, sued Griffin, alleging that several of the anecdotes in the book — which details a horrific experience of childhood rape and sexual abuse — were not Griffin’s, but her own. Griffin’s countersuit claims that the classmate’s lawsuit characterizes her as “a fraud and a thief.” This isn’t the kind of delicious, schadenfreude-dipped publishing-world drama about a bad art friend that other writers love to deconstruct in group texts. It’s a dispiriting legal battle in which two women who likely suffered profound sexual trauma are publicly battling, one with a focus on preserving both her reputation and her business interests, and the other with almost nothing on her side, including, thanks to Griffin’s countersuit, anonymity.

“The Tell” is about a woman who is by every possible measure successful, trying to understand what unseen force is holding her apart from an otherwise beautiful life — impacting her marriage, alienating her children and causing panic attacks. On the encouragement of her equally successful, equally blessed husband, Griffin agrees to try therapeutic MDMA. A former star student and long-distance runner from a prominent family in Amarillo, Texas, Griffin goes into her first session with a competitor’s single-minded determination to, as she writes, “get to the finish line.”

It takes almost no time for the drug to unearth memories of habitual sexual abuse by a teacher at her middle school that began when Griffin was 12 and continued until she was 16. Her confidence in the memories she recovers (“My body knew what had happened to me. The way I’d shake when I’d tell my story; the way my eyes welled up with tears at the mention of Texas”) sets her on a relentless trajectory of seeking legal and emotional redress.

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