I’m glad you brought this up, Roz. I have no issue with writers who use a pen name for fiction or who are living in a police state and are writing about stuff that could land them in jail or worse.

My problem is with first person essays written under a pen name because they allow the writer to lie with impunity. If I said my father was Cary Grant, you could check it out and call me a liar because I use my real name. If I wrote under a pen name, it would be difficult to do that. Cary Grant’s daughter Jennifer could be writing as Holly Wood for all we know.

I get suspicious when a writer with a pen name piles it on thick: they’re an autistic single mom who was raised in a cult by parents who rented them out to pedophiles by the hour and are now suffering from PTSD, leukemia, and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Victim porn is profitable these days but competitive. I always assume these people are making at least some of this stuff up.