PHOTO Bravo’s Andy Cohen pens memoir, book to be released next summer

Bravo executive producer, Watch What Happens: Live! host, Real Housewives wrangler, and highly contagious pop culture addict Andy Cohen announced earlier today that he has signed a deal with Henry Holt Publishing to release a book due out next summer! Here is how Andy announced the news via Twitter:

Excited to announce that Henry Holt is publishing my first book, stories about my love of, and life in, pop culture & TV. Out next summer!

Celebrity memoirs don’t excite me that much. They’re usually not very well written and any “shocking secrets” they may reveal are going to come out in the press anyway, so that’s not even much of a motivation to read them. I do confess I occasionally find myself thumbing through a copy at the bookstore to see childhood photos and such, but rarely am I inspired to actually labor through one.

BUT, Andy Cohen is a whole ‘nother story – literally! I can’t wait to read his anecdotes of being a kid from St. Louis coming up through the entertainment industry, not only because I am sure they are some really amazing stories, but because I know Andy will tell them with his usual joyful sincerity and charismatically positive tone! When did he come out of the closet? Did he have a rough time in high school? What was his big break? Which celebrities did he date? What is Big Poppa really like? I can’t wait!

The book is as yet untitled (Mazels, Jackholes, and Why I Loved It All was merely us having a little fun) and Andy has asked for your suggestions for what to call it! So give him a tweet at @BravoAndy or post on his Facebook wall with what you think his memoir/autobiography should be called!

Here’s the official press release with all sorts of info, including quotes from Andy himself:

BRAVO NETWORK EXECUTIVE ANDY COHEN TO PEN FIRST BOOK; HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY WILL PUBLISH MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE, IN AND ON TELEVISION, NEXT SUMMER

NEW YORK, August 8, 2011 – Andy Cohen, the executive vice president of original programming and development at Bravo and host of the network’s buzzy, late night interactive talk show “Watch What Happens: Live,” will add writer to his multi-hyphenated résumé. Henry Holt and Company will publish Cohen’s book, his first, about his life-long love of popular culture and of television, both behind the desk and on the set, it was announced today by Stephen Rubin, Holt’s president and publisher. The book will be published in summer 2012.

“Anyone who sees what Andy Cohen has achieved at Bravo knows the guy is a marketing genius,” said Rubin. “What nobody knows as of yet, is that Andy is also a very seductive and compelling writer with a story to tell that will charm, shock and engage readers with its candor, honesty and wit. Andy is as irresistible on the page as he is on screen.”

“I love to write and I’m thrilled that I get to share stories of my improbable intersections with pop culture that have enriched my life,” Cohen said.

Growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Mo., Cohen knew two things about himself: that he loved popular culture and that, around the age of 12, he was gay. He suppressed the latter and fed the former. His media diet was a steady stream of 70s shows like “The Brady Bunch,” “Laverne & Shirley,” and “Donny & Marie.” He had a passion too for the medium’s stars like Farrah Fawcett, Mary Tyler Moore and Susan Lucci, many of whom he would later meet. By his twenties, he was out of the closet and out of St. Louis. In 1989, his life changed forever when he landed an internship at CBS News in New York. With his irrepressible personality and sky’s-the-limit attitude, over time he went from intern to producer, absorbing everything he could about the industry and the guest stars on the network’s morning show. His book will include many hilarious moments of mishaps on the set and while on assignment, and tell of his coming-of-age social life filled with antics and mayhem.

Cohen’s vitae is an A-list of dream jobs in television. Aside from “CBS This Morning” where he rose from producer to senior producer, he also worked as a producer for the network’s “48 Hours.” He is a recurring commentator on pop culture for NBC’s “Today,” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and for HLN’s “The Joy Behar Show.” Before Bravo, he was a vice president of original programming at TRIO, a division of NBC Universal. As an executive producer, Cohen won an Emmy Award in 2010 for Bravo’s “Top Chef”; a Peabody Award in 2004 for the TRIO documentary “The N-Word”; and received 11 primetime Emmy nominations for many of his Bravo series including “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (2005), “Project Runway” (2006, 2007 and 2008) and for “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List” (2010 and 2011). He was named by OUT Magazine as the “hottest blogger of 2006.” He graduated from Boston University in 1990. Cohen resides in New York City.

Rubin acquired world rights, audio and first serial for the book from Creative Artists Agency on behalf of Cohen. The book will be edited by Holt executive editor Gillian Blake, who was the editor of the New York Times best-selling memoir by Rob Lowe, “Stories I Only Tell My Friends,” published in May.

I don’t usually get too excited about celebrity memoirs any more, due in large part to the fact that with the media scrutiny these days there aren’t many celebrities that have all that many