That's Beatrice Sparks, a Mormon youth counselor of dubious qualifications and master of the bullshit teen diary genre. Originally, Go Ask Alice was credited only to "Anonymous," but after it became a hit, Sparks came forward as its "editor," claiming in interviews that she transcribed a real teenager's diary, but she can't show it to you right now because, um, she left it in her other pants or something. Suspiciously, she was also the book's sole copyright holder. Oh, and there's the small fact that later editions had a disclaimer that flat-out said, "This is a work of fiction."
None of this fazed Sparks, who continued cranking out "real diaries" about teenagers having a shitty time, all written in the same mom-like style and lacking any of the inane stuff teens write about.
Harper Teen/Harper Collins/Harper Teen
Realistically, 90 percent of these should be terrible song lyrics.
But did any adults fall for this crap? The parents of 16-year-old suicide victim Alden Barrett apparently did, since they approached Sparks to publish their son's journal. Which she did ... after replacing most of it with a story about Satanism that she pulled out of her ass, of course.
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