Laura Victoria Albert (born November 2, 1965) is an American author of writings that include works credited to the literary persona JT LeRoy, whom Albert described as an "avatar", saying she was able to write things as LeRoy that she could not have said as Laura Albert. Albert was born and raised in Brooklyn. She has also used the names Emily Frasier and Speedie, and published other works as Laura Victoria and Gluttenberg. Albert was sued for fraud when she signed a film option contract with her pseudonym; a jury found against her. The damages to be paid to the film company were settled out of court. During her youth, Albert was associated with punk rock and skinhead movements. She worked for several years as a phone sex operator, and reviewing sex sites and products on the Web. During the 1990s, she achieved some degree of fame as a freelance sexpert, under the alias "Laura Victoria". At the same time, she started writing stories - using the pen name "Terminator" - in the voice of a young boy telling about his difficult childhood and life in the streets. "Baby Doll", JT LeRoy's first published story, appeared under the byline "Terminator" in a September 1997 anthology. Albert published three books under the JT LeRoy pseudonym – Sarah (2000), The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2001), and Harold's End (2004). According to The New Republic, Sarah was the second book Albert wrote but the first one published. The narrator is an adolescent among a group of lot lizards, teen male prostitutes at truck stops. Each wears a signature raccoon penis bone necklace. The narrator aspires to be like his mother, Sarah, to move higher in the ranks of prostitutes. The book is by JT LeRoy but LeRoy's character is never directly named. The nom de lizard is 'Cherry Vanilla' or, more regularly he is called Sarah, after his mother. The writing is evocative of a folksy magical realism, vivid, colorful phrases to describe the unconventional and gritty reality of a young boy. SF Weekly's literary critic described The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things as "essentially the prequel to Sarah." "This novel is a collection of ten stories that describe a "chaotic, nomadic, and abuse-filled childhood." In the opening story, "Disappearances," a young boy named Jeremiah leaves a stable foster home to reunite with his biological mother, Sarah, an 18-year-old drug addict. The stories begin in Appalachia and follow the characters to California. Jeremiah's grandfather beats him while invoking judgmental Christian dogma. The abuse is the most consistent form of physical touch Jeremiah knows, and he comes to interpret it as a form of love. Albert wrote "Dreams of Levitation," Sharif Hamza's short film for NOWNESS, and has also written for the acclaimed television series Deadwood. The film Radiance, which she also wrote, was made an official selection of the 2015 Bokeh South African International Fashion Film Festival. She collaborated with director and playwright Robert Wilson for the international exhibition of his VOOM video portraits, and with the catalog for his "Frontiers: Visions of the Frontier" at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM). In 2012 she served on the juries of the first Brasilia International Film Festival and the Sapporo International Short Film Festival; she also attended Brazil's international book fair, Bienal Brasil do Livro e da Leitura, where she and Alice Walker were the U.S. representatives. Brazil's Geração Editorial has re-released the JT LeRoy books in a box set under Laura Albert's name, and she and JT are the subjects of the hit Brazilian rock musical JT, Um Conto de Fadas Punk ("JT, A Punk Fairy Tale"). On March 11, 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Academy of Friends Oscar Party in San Francisco invited JT LeRoy – played by gender-fluid fashion model Rain Dove – to walk the runway as part of its HIV/AIDS fundraiser. In 2016, Laura Albert starred in a documentary about JT LeRoy that premiered at Sundance, titled Author: The JT LeRoy Story directed by Jeff Feuerzeig. Albert has taught at Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and has lectured with artist Jasmin Lim at Artists' Television Access with SF Camerawork's Chuck Mobley, in conjunction with a window installation about her work. A spokeswoman for the successful "Heart for Eye" campaign to raise funds for eye surgery for children, Albert hosted a television segment and was both an interviewee and an interviewer of inspirational women such as Anastasia Barbieri and Anh Duong. She was photographed by Steven Klein for QVEST magazine and by Kai Regan for his "Reckless Endangerment" at ALIFE; she has also done fashion shoots for Christian Lacroix and John Galliano. Albert profiled Juergen Teller for the 2003 Citibank Photography Prize catalogue; and published her reminiscence of Lou Reed in The Forward. She was a catalog contributor for the "Blind Cut" exhibition at New York's Marlborough Chelsea and collaborated with Williamsburg band Japanther, releasing a limited-edition cassette under the name True Love in a Large Room, with original artwork by Winston Smith. She has also written for dot429, the world's largest LGBTA professional network, and been an invited speaker at their annual conferences in New York.