Augusten Burroughs, Hon. D. Litt. 

Augusten Burroughs was born in Pittsburgh, PA and grew up in Western Massachusetts.  He is an autodidact with no formal education beyond elementary school. He began working as an advertising copywriter in San Francisco as a teenager and spent 18 years creating global ad campaigns for some of the most iconic brands in the world, from American Express and UPS to the World Wildlife Fund.

His first book, the novel Sellevision, was published in 2000. His second book, the memoir Running with Scissors was released in 2002 and became a publishing phenomenon, spending three years on The New York Times bestseller list.  Every book he's written since also been a New York Times bestseller and his works have been translated into over thirty-five languages.

​In 2013 Augusten was honored to accept a Doctor of Letters from the Savannah College of Art & Design in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has had the privilege of  teaching several workshops.

Augusten has collected jewelry all his life and in 2016 was the first man to be profiled in the jewelry section of The New York Times. He is a Certified Professional Gemologist with special training in pearls and opals. He is also a second-generation collector of jade. In 2019, he decided to make his extensive collection of fine and rare jewelry available to the public.  His jewelry can be purchased at his store, The Blue Paisley Fox,  exclusively through the luxury retail website 1stDibs. Visit his store by clicking here.

Augusten Burroughs, his husband Christopher Schelling, and their dogs occupy a two-hundred-year-old estate in rural Connecticut.