A Rollicking Collection of True Tales from the Founding Editor of the Huffington Post
- Elevated Magazines
- May 10, 2018
- 2 min read
With zinging wit and zero propriety, one of media's most successful executives bares all in hilarious literary debut
“Frank, fearless, and very funny.”
– Arianna Huffington
If David Sedaris, Chelsea Handler, Larry David, and Caitlin Moran had the unlikeliest orgy in history, the resulting love child might one day write a book like Roy Sekoff’s debut, Lacks Self-Control: True Stories I Waited Until My Parents Died to Tell.

Taking its title from Sekoff’s kindergarten teacher’s strikingly prophetic report card proclamation ('Although he is generally agreeable, Roy lacks self-control'), this summer’s release of Lacks Self-Control marks the arrival of a collection of stories that 99% of the population would be too reticent, embarrassed -- or, let’s face it, polite -- to write down, let alone share with the world. Which is, of course, precisely the point.
Caroming between Sekoff’s Miami childhood, overstimulated adolescence, and A-list adjacent adulthood, Lacks Self-Control is a rambunctious, rollicking, occasionally raunchy read. Roy Sekoff -- founding editor of the Huffington Post and cocreator of HuffPost Live -- is stepping back into the spotlight with the release of Lacks Self-Control.
After a career spent dancing to the rhythms of the 24/7 news cycle, Sekoff walked away from his high-profile, high-paying, completely secure job as second-in-command at HuffPost to rest, relax, and spend more time with his family -- and decided to at last fulfill his first-grade teacher’s prophecy: “Roy enjoys creative writing and should be encouraged to do so more often.”

From a teenage pilgrimage to a Times Square porn superstore to life-changing experiences with high colonics and psychic readings to his deep catalogue of close encounters of the celebrity kind, Lacks Self-Control chronicles Sekoff’s unwavering commitment to overshare.
“The idea of leaving a job to ‘spend more time with your family’ has become a standard punchline -- but in my case, it was actually true. Little did I know that as my always-revved inner motor slowly downshifted, my unconscious would intervene, repeatedly forcing me out of bed in the middle of the night, mind racing with ideas and recollections of stories I wanted to tell,” he continues.
“I soon realized that if I ever hoped to get a decent night’s sleep again, I was going to have to get these stories out of my head and onto paper. ‘Lacks Self-Control’ is the result.”
"It's for those who appreciate wit and candor, don’t blush easily, see life as both fundamentally absurd and a glorious gift, and can find humor amid the wave of humiliations, great and small, that life inevitably sends our way,” Sekoff adds.
A lively, irreverent raconteur whose sharp observations wring laughs out of an often-ludicrous yet relatable life, Lacks Self-Control will hit the shelves June 2018.