Would the real Alex Vause please stand up

Many of you, I’m sure, think you’d love the idea of seeing your life portrayed in movies or television. But imagine if you knew nothing about it. If one day, you saw an ad for a TV show, about you, or at least your life, as the central character. Would you be scared, shocked, angry, a little excited. Cleary Wolters experienced all of thee things.

As she saw her life in prison portrayed as Alex Vaus in ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK.

Originally portrayed as Nora Jansen in Piper Kerman’s book,  her life would transform again as a result of her story becoming part of an entertainment and cultural juggernaut.

Now Cleary Wolters takes her star turn as a writer and tells her story in her memoir Out of Orange: A Memoir.

My conversation with Cleary Wolters:

What's a nice girl like you, doing in a place like this?

After graduating from Smith College, Piper Kerman fell in with a bad relationship and a hard-partying, drug dealing crowd. Ten years after she left it all behind, her past came back to haunt her. In her memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, she tells the powerful, heartfelt story of her 15 months in federal prison, of the women she met and befriended and of the idea and power of community, even behind bars.

My conversation with Piper Kerman: