Busey-Hunt, Brook

(Brook Busey, Diablo Cody)

PERSONAL: Married Jon Hunt (a musician).

ADDRESSES: Home—Minneapolis, MN. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Gotham Publicity, Penguin Group, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Worked as a typist and as a stripper in Minneapolis, MN; City Pages (alternative weekly), Minneapolis, associate arts editor.

WRITINGS:

(As Diablo Cody) Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper (memoir), Gotham (New York, NY), 2005.

Writer of screenplays, including Juno.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A screenplay.

SIDELIGHTS: Brook Busey-Hunt is a screenwriter and the author of a memoir of her experiences as a stripper. After meeting her future husband, keyboardist Jon Hunt, online, she moved to the Twin Cities, where he lived, and worked in an office. When Busey-Hunt saw an ad for an amateur night on the marquee of a strip club, she began a new career, one that she documented in a journal.

Busey-Hunt wrote Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper under the pseudonym Diablo Cody. In the memoir, she tells of her time as a stripper, moving from club to club, giving lap dances and stripping behind glass. After a year she took a different career path and became arts editor of a Minneapolis alternative weekly. Her book reflects her fondness for the women with whom she stripped, but reveals how they are often exploited by the clubs. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that "readers will wish the book were longer, though they'll be glad it ends before anything really ugly happens." A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that "for the most part this is an honest and amusing memoir that trades in neither pathos nor down-and-out freakery."

Amy Carlson Gustafson, who interviewed Busey-Hunt for the Pioneer Press, commented on Juno, Busey-Hunt's first screenplay to be made into a film. Gustafson wrote that "the buzz is that Juno, about a young teen dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, is in the same vein as the quirky cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. One Hollywood-type has dubbed it 'Fallopian Dynamite.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Cody, Diablo, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, Gotham (New York, NY), 2005.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2005, Kristine Huntley, review of Candy Girl, p. 13.

Daily Variety, June 24, 2005, Nicole LaPorte, "Mandate Jumps on Juno," p. 2.

Entertainment Weekly, Jessica Shaw, "Meet the Candy Stripper" (interview), p. 84.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2005, review of Candy Girl, p. 1121.

Library Journal, December 1, 2005, Debra Moore, review of Candy Girl, p. 140.

Pioneer Press, January 1, 2006, Amy Carlson Gustafson, "Diablo Cody: From Stripper to Screenwriter" (interview), p. E9.

Publishers Weekly, October 3, 2005, review of Candy Girl, p. 58.

ONLINE

Brook Busey-Hunt Home Page, http://www.diablo-cody.com (March 5, 2006).