Mikel Jollett

Mikel Jollett, the frontman of the indie band The Airborne Toxic Event, was an on-air columnist for NPR’s All Things Considered, an editor-at-large for Men’s Health and an editor at Filter magazine. His fiction has been published in McSweeney’s. Jollett was born into the Church of Synanon, a rehab place for drug addicts that became one of the country’s most infamous cults. In his memoir Hollywood Park (Celadon Books) Jollet recalls a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. He and his older brother were separated from their parents when they were six months old and raised in the cult’s “School.” After years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult with his mother and older brother. But life outside Synanon was not easier. Dealing with a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game, THE MILLIONS noted that “Jollett’s story serves as a potent reminder that while we cannot change the hand we’re dealt, our freedom lies in what we choose to do with those cards.”