US author Amy Griffin is suing a former classmate for defamation, saying the woman's statements in a New York Times story and a subsequent lawsuit alleging Griffin appropriated her stories of sexual abuse for her bestselling 2025 memoir The Tell are false in "every element".
Griffin's lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nevada on Monday, says that in 2025 her former middle school classmate "told The New York Times - and through it, the world - that Amy Griffin is a fraud and a thief".
The lawsuit says that in the woman's telling, "Mrs Griffin stole the rape of another woman and built a bestseller on it".
