Nan Talese, publisher and James Frey advocate, made a stir late last month when she spoke at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference in Grapevine, Texas and lambasted Oprah Winfrey as being "mean and self-serving" and exhibiting "fiercely bad manners" in her treatment of Frey when he appeared on her television program in January of 2006. (Click here to view a video clip of Talese speaking in the near-darkness of a dimmed auditorium while Joyce Carol Oates looks on from an illuminated podium.) And yesterday the New York Times gave readers an update on Laura Albert , the 41-year-old woman best known for her writings published under the name of her elaborate fictional persona, JT LeRoy --a young transgendered, sexually questioning, biologically male, former homeless drug addict and male prostitute. Reporter Alan Feuer traveled with Albert from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where she met with David Milch--creator, head writer, and executive producer of HBO's Deadwood--who apparently handed the bankrupt author $500 in cash and asked her to "quit this sick behavior ."