Amy Griffin sues woman who said author stole her stories of rape for hit memoir The Tell

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Author and venture capitalist Amy Griffin is suing the woman who accused her of stealing her stories of rape for the bestselling memoir “The Tell.”Griffin filed a lawsuit against her former classmate for defamation on Monday, claiming that in 2025, the woman “told The New York Times — and through it, the world — that Amy Griffin is a fraud and a thief.” According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S.District Court in Nevada, “The Tell” recounts Griffin’s own harrowing tale of sexual abuse by a middle school teacher in Amarillo, Texas, but the former classmate claims that Griffin’s bestseller was built on stolen material — the rape of the former classmate.

The 2025 memoir garnered high praise from bestseller-inducing trifecta Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Jenna Bush Hager.It was an Oprah’s Book Club pick, a darling on the literary podcast circuit, hyped by Griffin’s longtime bestie Gwyneth Paltrow and included the kind of disturbing and sensational elements that would stir book clubs and group chats across the country.

And stir it did.The Nerve columnist Maureen Callahan posted a video to YouTube titled, “Here’s Why Everyone Celebrating the New and Controversial Book ‘The Tell’ by Amy Griffin Is Wrong,” which delved into what she called the book’s “missing pieces.” On Goodreads, reviewers were divided, with some praising the book as “brave and necessary” and others writing that “something seems fishy.” In the memoir, Griffin recounts that she was undergoing an illegal form of psychedelic-drug therapy using MDMA — known on the street as ecstasy or molly — when she recovered buried memories of years-long sexual abuse at the hands of a middle-school teacher that began when she was 12 and lasted for several years.

“This is the story of a secret, a secret kept for decades, one I had buried so deep I didn’t even know it was there...