Burroughs is best known as the author of dark-comedy childhood memoir
Running with Scissors, which was made into a 2006 film with Alec Baldwin and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Augusten Xon Burroughs spent his teens living with an (allegedly) loopy psychiatrist's family in Northampton, Massachusetts, after his (allegedly) psychotic poet mother relinquished responsibility for him. Burroughs ended up dropping out of high school and getting his GED before going to work as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather. His first novel, Sellevision, came out in 2000 when he was 35, but it was his memoir about his teenage life, 2002's Running With Scissors, that made him a star, spending almost three years on the bestseller list. He's since published nearly half a dozen more drawn-from-life books and collections of essays.

With Running with Scissors dominating the bestseller charts, Burroughs' adoptive family came out of the woodwork to dispute its veracity. In 2005, the Turcottes (called the Finches in the book) filed a $2 million lawsuit against Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, for invasion of privacy and libel, claiming that he falsely portrayed them as an "unhygienic and mentally unstable cult engaged in bizarre, and, at times, criminal activity." Although Burroughs has always insisted (and still insists) on the infallibility of his memories and the veracity of the book, in August 2007 he settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, agreeing that in future editions the author's note would use the word "book" rather than "memoir" and that the acknowledgments would describe the family's memories of events as "different from my own," and express regret for "any unintentional harm." [Image via Getty]