Why Didn’t More of Us Question Alice Sebold’s Memoir?
The Cut, December 10, 2021: Why Didn’t More of Us Question Alice Sebold’s Memoir?
“When the news broke just over two weeks ago that Anthony Broadwater, the man who served 16 years in prison for the rape of The Lovely Bones author Alice Sebold, had been exonerated, the literary community was shocked. As the story (which at this point you probably already know) goes, Sebold meticulously detailed her assault and Broadwater’s 1982 trial (though she gave him a pseudonym) in her 1999 best-selling memoir, Lucky. From the beginning, Broadwater consistently asserted his innocence, which led to his being denied parole five times. After his release, on December 31, 1998, he tried repeatedly to get himself removed from the sex-offender registry to no avail. That is, until producer Timothy Mucciante, who was adapting Lucky into a film, started asking questions. After being fired from the film, Mucciante hired a private investigator to track down Broadwater. (The film based on Lucky, by the way, has since lost its financing and is no longer in production.) Mucciante also hired a lawyer to work on Broadwater’s exoneration and started work on a new film, Unlucky, a documentary about Broadwater.”
Additional reading:
The New York Times, November 30, 2021: Alice Sebold Apologizes to Man Wrongly Convicted of Raping Her
Salon, December 5, 2021: Alice Sebold's "Lucky" and the problem with memoirs with happy endings
LitHub, December 3, 2021: A documentary about Anthony Broadwater’s exoneration, called Unlucky, is in the works.
The Guardian, December 5, 2021: My role in clearing the man wrongly convicted for rape of Alice Sebold
