What people are saying about Pretty Baby
“Pretty Baby is a muscular, canny memoir about labor and power and gender; it shimmers with rage and insight and I couldn’t put it down. What a fucking gorgeous book.” —Carmen Maria Machado
“Chris Belcher’s Pretty Baby reminds me why I fell in love with memoirs in the first place.” —Saeed Jones
“Count me among Chris Belcher’s forever fans. Pretty Baby… had my heart from page one.” —Melissa Febos
“Absolutely not to be missed.” —Vogue
Lambda Literary Award 2023
Finalist, Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Chris Belcher
Author | Book Coach | Story Consultant
Ways to Work With Me
Ghostwriting
Book Coaching
Story Consultation
About me
Hi, I’m Chris.
I was born and raised in rural West Virginia. Very rural. Like, no stoplights rural. Like, you could see a McDonald’s off in the distance, but the Ohio River stood between me and a Big Mac. The bridge to get across was a twenty-minute drive. Out of desperation, a few times we swam over. I realized I was gay in that tiny town with no McDonald’s, and that was a journey. I wrote about it in my debut memoir, Pretty Baby.
We’ve all got stories to tell about the people we’ve been, and the people we want to become. Because I want to help people tell their own stories, I became a professor and a writing coach. I teach Gender and Sexuality Studies and in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California, where I completed my PhD in 2016.
In addition to being an author and a teacher, I’ve also worked as an authenticity consultant, a barista, a security guard, a line cook, and an editor. I edited the acclaimed anthology, We Too, for the Feminist Press. I’m most proud of that one.
If you’d like to talk about a story you’re telling, be it film/tv or memoir of your own, reach out to discuss how I might be of service.
I live in Los Angeles.
