The Portland-based musician and reality TV star comes to The Arena to celebrate the launch of her memoir: a coming-of-age tale of her battle against drug addiction and hereditary mental illness.

About Crazy Enough:

If you're not yet familiar with rock star powerhouse Storm Large, you are in for quite the introduction. An indie rock sensation and star of her own highly-acclaimed, one-woman show, Storm now brings her larger-than-life talents to the page. She launches into her raw and affecting memoir Crazy Enough in a way that manages to be both brash and vulnerable at the same time. With a rare honesty that the Portland Mercury called "uncannily charismatic and generous," Storm takes us back to the days of her challenging childhood with the lyrical power of a true storyteller. You will learn more about her in these first four pages than some memoirs can chronicle in their entirety, and when she starts describing her tumultuous punk-rock adolescence in 1980's Boston, you'll feel like you've known her for ages.

Yet underneath her bold actions, Storm also shares how unstable her youth was. From undiagnosed hypersexuality, to seeing her beautiful, gifted mother struggle severely with a litany of mental illnesses, Storm grew up looking for ways to escape reality. She spent much of her childhood visiting her mother in various mental hospitals, and the rest of the time having to fend for herself, picking fights with anyone who looked at her the wrong way or teased her about being too tall, too loud, or too different. Although she loved her mother more than anything, it unnerved Storm when people constantly said she would grow up to be just like her—including a doctor who told 9-year-old Storm that her mother's mental issues were hereditary, and she would eventually end up in that same, hopeless situation.

To combat her "diagnosis," Storm set off into her adolescence, convinced that she had to violently reject every bit of her fragile, feminine mother she saw in herself—losing her virginity at age 13, sleeping with strangers, experimenting with drugs, and living a life on the run. Then, in her twenties, with nothing to live for and a growing heroin addiction, Storm accepted a chance invitation to sing with a friend's band. That night, she reconnected with her life-affirming love of music, which pulled her back from the edge. Through her talent for singing, and deep love of performing, she finally found a reason to be present and proud of her own life—as well as a huge following of fans who love her for always telling the truth.

In Crazy Enough, Storm speaks frankly about the forces, friendships, and life-changing events that helped her become the unstoppable woman she is today. This memoir is about an artist's journey of realizing her own strength and unique sources of inspiration, and is a love song to the flawed parts in all of us that are often deemed "crazy."

About the author:

Storm Large is often recognized as the beloved, larger-than-life contestant on the reality show Rock Star: Supernova, and her one-woman show, also titled Crazy Enough, has appeared off-Broadway in New York City. Storm has been singing and slinging inappropriate banter at audiences around the globe for more than fifteen years and shows no sign of slowing down or shutting up. She earned an associate's degree from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, where her big dramatic voice impressed her teachers and made musical theater the obvious choice for her. However, Storm resonated more with Alphabet City than Broadway, spending all her free time in gritty rock clubs with the lowlifes, sluts, and geniuses she adored. She pursued rock 'n' roll instead.

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