No Author Photo? Maybe There’s No Author.

Before James Frey and JT LeRoy, there was Vicki Johnson, who claimed to be the adoptive mother of a boy dying of AIDS. Too sick to meet anyone, ever, the boy nonetheless published an autobiography, sans author photo. Writer Armistead Maupin, who befriended the teen without ever actually laying eyes on him, was only one of Johnson’s many celebrity dupes.