Jillian Lauren

A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem, and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, leaving behind her gritty East Village apartment for a palace with rugs laced with gold and trading her band of artist friends for a coterie of backstabbing beauties. More than just a sexy read set in an exotic land, Some Girls is also the story of how a rebellious teen found herself-and the courage to meet her birth mother and eventually adopt a baby boy.

My Life in a Harem

Some Girls

?A punk rock Scheherazade” (Margaret Cho) shares the zigzagging path that took her from being a member of a harem to motherhood Jillian Lauren is not your typical mom. In Everything You Ever Wanted, she recounts her journey of starting a family after a radically untraditional beginning that was fraught with sex, drugs and rock and roll and immortalized in the internationally bestselling memoir Some Girls. With the same unflinching honesty displayed in Some Girls, Lauren chronicles how, after she loses her best friend to an overdose and her parents disown her, she is saved by her love for her adopted son with special needs. Exploring complex ideas of identity and reinvention, Everything You Ever Wanted is a must-read for everyone, especially every mother, who has ever hoped for a second act in life.

A Memoir

Everything You Ever Wanted

After her musician boyfriend is killed in a fatal car crash, Bebe remains in Los Angeles to overcome her trauma as she tries to deal with unreliable men, eccentric friends, and the dangers of overmedication.

A Novel

Pretty

Enter the mind of a serial killer and his victims. When researching a new crime novel, Jillian spoke to Mitzi Roberts, the famed LAPD homicide detective. During that conversation, Mitzi revealed that her greatest achievement was catching a murderer. But also that she was absolutely convinced that that killer had killed many more. So Jillian went to speak the murderer himself – and that’s where she fell into a rabbit hole. Over 40 hours of conversation, Samuel Little confessed killing after killing to Jillian Lauren. He told her of the marginalised and drug-addicted women he strangled to death. He sent her memorial ‘art’ of his victims. He talked and talked and talked. And when he finished talking, she realised she had been speaking to one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. Not only was Jillian astounded at how Samuel had opened up to her, uncovering his horrific deeds, but she also recognised herself in the stories of his victims. The vulnerable sex workers and drug addicts – just as she had previously been. This is a haunting parallel story of killer, author and victims, the journey into a disturbing mind and a murderer that shocked the world.

Facing America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer

Behold the Monster

Michael Connelly

Confronting America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

De achttienjarige Jillian Lauren begint vol goede moed aan een opleiding aan een New Yorkse toneelschool, maar komt al snel in aanraking met een man die op zoek is naar knappe Amerikaanse meisjes die als een soort betaalde vakantie de feesten van een rijke zakenman in Singapore op willen fleuren. Niet echt mensenschuw, maar misschien wel meer dan een beetje naïef zit Jillian een paar dagen later in het vliegtuig naar Borneo, waar ze uiteindelijk achttien maanden zal verblijven in de harem van prins Jefri Bolkiah, de jongste broer van de sultan van Brunei. Ze verruilt haar groezelige flat in New York voor een weelderig paleis waar ze over met gouddraad doorschoten tapijten loopt, en waar haar artistieke vrienden plaatsmaken voor een verzameling jaloerse schoonheden. Het paleis van een sultan, een charmante prins, en een flinke portie decadentie: Haremmeisje is niet alleen een intrigerend boek dat zich laat lezen als een eigenzinnig modern sprookje, maar vooral ook het verhaal van een jonge vrouw op zoek naar zichzelf.

Haremmeisje

'Fearless and fierce ... transcends a crime story to be a story that threatens social order' - Michael Connelly 'Bewitching . . . a tale of horror that is also humane and self-aware' - Jennifer Egan 'Wildly original... true crime fans will find this a unique and disturbing thrill ride' - Publishers Weekly 'Blending gruesome forensic details with tender domestic moments . . . a panoramic tale of America's worst serial killer' - Daily Telegraph 'Chilling' - the Sun Jillian Lauren set out to research a serial killer for a novel. Instead, she put one at the centre of her life. Months of exchanging letters with Samuel Little in prison landed her a face-to-face meeting - and the trust of a monster. In the hours of harrowing interviews that followed, Little confessed to the murders of ninety-three women, making him America's most prolific serial killer. As the investigations escalated, the disturbing relationship took its toll on Lauren, both psychologically and legally - but she couldn't stop. Conversations with a psychopath, intertwined with intensely personal experience and the stories of those killed told for the first time, result in an unforgettable true crime account. Behold the Monster is a journey into a mind and murderer that shocked the world, but one that ultimately lifts the lives of the victims with such grace that we cannot look away.

Patrick O'Neil

Steve Heller

Wendy C. Ortiz

Yuvi Zalkow

Daniel José Older

Susan Southard

Elizabeth Earley

Andromeda Romano-Lax

Bernadette Murphy

Laraine Herring

Naomi Benaron

Joan Dempsey

Tara Ison

Noriko Nakada

Alistair McCartney

Gayle Brandeis

Michael Passafiume

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

Dawna Kemper

Wendy Hudson

Rochelle Newman

Gordon Lee Johnson

F. Douglas Brown

Anna Scotti

Antoinette Brim

Jose Hernandez Diaz

Valentina Gnup

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Steve De Jarnatt

Lauren Schmidt

Topper Lilien

Lisbeth Andriessen

Deborah Bauer

Antonia Crane

Tammy Delatorre

Jacqueline Heinze

LaToya Jordan

Hazel Kight Witham

David Bumpus

Raymond Gaston

Katelyn Keating

Lise Quintana

Arielle Silver

Wendy Dutwin

Seth Fischer

Michael Leal García

Khadija Anderson

Angela Brommel

M. L. Brown

Joe Jiménez

Tanya Ko Hong

Shelly Krehbiel

Gina Loring

Allie Marini

Maiana Minahal

Jim Natal

Daniel G. Reinhold

Chrys Tobey

Reyan Grande

2017 marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. We commemorated this occasion with a special edition of our journal. Lunch Ticket Special: Celebrating 20 Years of Antioch¿s MFA in Creative Writing features new and previously published works by Antioch MFA alumni.

Celebrating 20 Years of Antioch's MFA in Creative Writing

Lunch Ticket Special

A Best Memoir of 2015, “This memoir is compulsively readable and full of humor and heart.”—AdoptiveFamilies.com “A punk rock Scheherazade” (Margaret Cho) shares the zigzagging path that took her from harem member to PTA member… In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei’s harem, an experience she immortalized in in her bestselling memoir, SOME GIRLS. In her thirties, Jillian's most radical act was learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs. After Jillian loses a close friend to drugs, she herself is saved by her fierce, bold love for her son as she fights to make him—and herself—feel safe and at home in the world. Exploring complex ideas of identity and reinvention, Everything You Ever Wanted is a must-read for everyone, especially every mother, who has ever hoped for a second act in life.

Le mie notti nell'harem. Una cattiva ragazza alla corte del principe del Brunei

Jillian Lauren

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