Artist Lauren Conrad

Lo, witness the intellectual rebirth of Lauren Conrad, who—weary of having her every social-climbing move scrutinized and every teary heart-to-heart mocked by the Internet—recently bequeathed The Hills, a paparazzi Panopticon, to bottom-feeding frenemies Spencer and Heidi to embark on the next chapter of her blessed destiny: as a woman of letters. Conrad’s fertile imagination gifted last summer's L.A. Candy, a fanciful story of a beautiful, determined young woman who moves to Los Angeles only to find herself the subject of her own reality show, told with a Dickensian detail and a talent for leitmotif that would make Joyce irate with envy.

Updated 02/03/2010