James Frey's Blog, page 5
June 25, 2025
Time Sensitive James Frey (and other interviews)
from Time Sensitive with Spencer Bailey
James Frey on Designing Your Life to Bring Joy
In 2003, when the author James Frey published his first book, A Million Little Pieces—a gut-punch account of his experience with addiction and rehab—nobody could have expected what would come next. Thanks to an Oprah Book Club endorsement, A Million Little Pieces was instantly catapulted to bestseller status, but soon blew up in scandal after Frey admitted to having falsified certain portions of the book, which had been marketed as a memoir. The drama that ensued sparked a media controversy—one that now, around 20 years later, feels petty and misplaced, especially in the context of today’s cancel-culture climate. More than 10 million copies of A Million Little Pieces have sold since, and Frey is still at it, writing, publishing, and pushing the boundaries of his art. His latest novel, Next to Heaven, is a rollicking, raunchy, absurd-yet-not satire about money, murder, and the all-too-human desires for power, pleasure, and greed.
On the episode—our Season 11 finale, in which Frey sat lotus for the entire duration—he reflects on the A Million Little Pieces saga; his long-term study of Taoism; writing as a gateway to vulnerability; and why love, for him, is the greatest drug there is.
Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels .
[ click to listen at Time Sensitve ]
OTHER INTERVIEWS
BBC Front with Tom Sutcliffe
Totally Booked With Zibby
Writer’s Ink from BookTrib
Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books
June 24, 2025
June 23, 2025
Winged Victory of Samothrace
Inside the world of the notorious “A Million Little Pieces” author, who’s back in the spotlight with a pulpy new murder mystery.
Written by: Paul Thompson
The thing about working for magazines is you end up in lots of cars with men you’ve just met. And so by the time we pull up to the monolithic black house at the end of a long driveway in New Canaan, Connecticut, about an hour from our departure point in New York, the three of us—photographer Adam Powell; his assistant for the day, a contemplative musician whose high school girlfriend had once grown evangelical about this story’s subject; and myself—have already developed not only a plan for the shoot and interview but a shared set of crypticisms to track its progress. This is work. Still, when we step out of the car, we’re transfixed. Alone in the otherwise empty front lawn sits a replica of one of the most recognizable statues in the Western canon: Winged Victory of Samothrace, the goddess Niké missing her head and arms. We stare; we riff; we grow quiet again. Without us noticing, the house’s owner approaches from behind. “The real one is in the Louvre,” he says.
James Frey has lived in New Canaan for more than a decade, and in this house for about half that time, since the split from his wife of 20 years. The black exterior is in contrast with the floor-to-ceiling white inside. When I comment on the paint’s unusual texture (following Frey’s lead, I had removed my shoes and socks during our trek through the tall grass toward the pond in his backyard), he explains that this is what they use on the tops of skyscrapers. He believes it’s the only material that adequately reflects the sunlight that pours in through giant windows. His collection of art is expensive, abundant, indisputably cohesive. Almost as soon as we’ve finished discussing the real Samothrace’s prime placement in Paris—we are, ultimately, four people who can picture the Louvre—Frey is posing for photos in the nook of his living room where he writes, in the weeds outside his bedroom window, on rocks that jut from a creek near a friendly bobcat’s lair, face stoic, one or both of his middle fingers raised.This is early May. Almost exactly 22 years prior, Frey’s first book, A Million Little Pieces, was published to mixed, sometimes tortured reviews but achieved, over the next two-and-a-half years, supernova commercial success. If Frey’s name sparks even the vaguest jolt of recognition, you also likely remember the controversy over the revelation that parts of Pieces had been exaggerated, or fabricated entirely. The book was marketed as a memoir, and Frey had defended it in public as such. Oprah at first lavished him with praise, then later brought him on her show to excoriate him.Since the scandal began in earnest in 2005, Frey, now 55, has given vanishingly few interviews—even when he published Katerina, his first full, literary novel in a decade, in 2018. But he’s evidently reconsidered this approach. In the leadup to the publication of Next To Heaven, his pulpy new murder mystery about an upper-crust town not unlike New Canaan, he’s hired a renowned publicist; when I visit him, he’s in the middle of the long process of sitting for a New York Times profile. At one point, he requests that we go off the record so he can explicate why, exactly, he’s opening himself to this media attention and scrutiny. But what he tells me when my recorder is off is virtually identical to something he says when it’s switched back on: “I want my title back.”
June 22, 2025
Hot and Sweaty
by DREAM BABY PRESS AND MATT STARR
Last Tuesday we hosted the book launch for James Frey’s new book Next To Heaven published by Authors Equity at Harper’s Gallery in NYC. I’ve been feeling sad recently so it was nice to read some new poems aloud, be around friends, hear some good stories and throw James a big book launch.
Gina Gershon, Carole Radziwill, Matt Starr (your trusted narrator), Lili Anolik, Annie Hamilton, Sarah Hoover, and Laura Desiree read before James came on at the end and closed the show. I’ll detail what each person read below.
The theme was love and sex.
June 19, 2025
Authors Equity NEXT TO HEAVEN
On the release of Next to Heaven by James Frey
New Bethlehem is as beautiful and safe and perfect a town as exists in the United States, as beautiful and safe and perfect a town as exists anywhere in the world. But no beauty exists without flaws, however hidden. Absolute safety is but an illusion. No matter what we think or see or believe or feel, perfection isn’t real. And beneath the beauty and safety and perfection of New Bethlehem, there are secrets and there are lies, and there is sadness and there is rage, there is failure and there is desperation, betrayal and heartbreak, hate and violence.
And once or twice in a century, there is murder.
About a year ago, I was boarding a flight from LA to New York, bracing for six hours in a middle seat at the back of the plane. My phone pinged with a text flagging a priority submission. I downloaded, put in earphones to tune out seatmates, and settled in for the ride. And what a ride it’s been.
I had last encountered
James Frey a few decades earlier when I was the sales director for the imprint publishing his debut—a spectacular piece of writing that did spectacularly well until it became spectacularly controversial. Many people got very, very angry at the author.
I wasn’t one of them. To me, the whole thing seemed tragic and operatically fraught. Looking back on it now, compared to so many other literary controversies, this one makes 2003 feel, to me, like the Victorian age—long ago and far away in its earnest morality.
By the time I got off that plane in New York last spring, I knew I wanted to publish James’ new book.
June 18, 2025
Love & Hate
40 Things James Frey Loves and Hates
ddDream Baby Press asked James Frey for a list of 20 things he loves and 20 things he hates.
James Frey was called America’s Most Notorious Author by Time Magazine and a Literary Outlaw by The New York Times. He has written multiple global bestsellers, including A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shiny Morning, and The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. His books have sold more than thirty million copies, and his work has been published in forty-two languages. He lives in a small town in Connecticut.
His new book NEXT TO HEAVEN is out today. Get your copy now and wherever books are sold.
Follow James Frey on Instagram.
Follow Dream Baby Press on Instagram.
THINGS JAMES FREY LOVES:A passionate make out, heavy lips, heavy tongue, high school style.Cold sweet coffeeA strong menthol cigarette, once or twice a monthThe joyful nothingness of a long meditationWarm swimming pools…THINGS JAMES FREY HATES:Close talkersSpittleDrunk peopleBillsSlow drivers in the fast lane…June 17, 2025
Peace in New Canaan
The writer has a new novel out, and this time, the drama—set among Connecticut’s elite—is all on the page.
DUTCH DOSCHERJames Frey has found peace in New Canaan, Connecticut. In the decades since his memoir of rehabilitation A Million Little Pieces became the center of controversy in the publishing world—it initially found a place in Oprah’s book club before a number of exaggerations and falsehoods were exposed—he’s found a sanctuary away from the limelight.
When we speak, Frey has just returned from a college roadtrip with his son. It’s clear that while family time and a life away from the spotlight are determining factors in his transformation, it’s his home of more than a decade that seems most crucial to his calm attitude, a transformation from the early, irascible, years of his success. Looking out of the picture window in his living room in early April, he says, “It’s just the most beautiful place. It’s majestic.” It’s surprising then, that such an idyllic setting inspired Next to Heaven, his new tale of lies and deceit set among Connecticut’s one percent.
The novel centers on four couples in the town of New Bethlehem, a town which he describes as a “version” of New Canaan. Frey is quick to note, however, that it is his town, “not his neighbors,” that is mirrored in the book. The denizens of New Bethlehem, some new, others very old, shop at the same expensive supermarkets, send their children to the same prestigious school, and play tennis at the same exclusive country club. They also share secrets—financial turmoil, affairs, and drug problems—that threaten to ruin their artfully cultivated image of perfection.
June 16, 2025
June 15, 2025
T&C: Best Reads of Summer 2025 w/ NEXT TO HEAVEN
Buzzy novels, compulsively readable memoirs, and a few guilty pleasures.
BY DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH, EMILY BURACK AND ADAM RATHE
Next To HeavenIt’s as tale as old as time: dark secrets lurk behind artfully cultivated hedge roses. In James Frey’s latest novel, Next to Heaven, four couples in the wealthy enclave of New Bethlehem, Conn. (a fictionalized New Haven) find their lives upended after a swinging shindig held by local queen bees Devon McCallister and Belle Hedges Moore goes awry. As mysteries unfold, romances begin and end, and fortunes are made and lost, there’s only one possible conclusion: someone has been pulling the strings the whole time.
June 14, 2025
NEXT TO HEAVEN BOOK LAUNCH
Harper’s Gallery | 512 W 22nd Street, join Dream Baby and James Frey for the Next to Heaven launch party.
Date and timeTuesday, June 17 · 7 – 9pm EDT
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