Melissa Febos

A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society. In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.

Girlhood

Memoir meets craft masterclass in this "daring, honest, psychologically insightful" exploration of how we think and write about intimate experiences--"a must read for anybody shoving a pen across paper or staring into a screen or a past" (Mary Karr). In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it. How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an author's way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as "navel-gazing"--or else hailed as "so brave, so raw"? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her own path from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor--via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia--Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas--and occasional notes of caution--to anyone who has ever hoped to see themselves in a story.

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

Body Work

In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection -- with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession -- and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another. At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer's life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.

Abandon Me

A dark, wild, powerful memoir about a young woman’s transformation from college student to professional dominatrix While a college student at The New School, Melissa Febos spent four years working as a dominatrix in a midtown dungeon. In poetic, nuanced prose she charts how unchecked risk-taking eventually gave way to a course of self-destruction. But as she recounts crossing over the very boundaries that she set for her own safety, she never plays the victim. In fact, the glory of this memoir is Melissa’s ability to illuminate the strange and powerful truths that she learned as she found her way out of a hell of her own making. Rest assured; the reader will emerge from the journey more or less unscathed.

A Memoir

Whip Smart

The award-winning author of Girlhood returns with a revelatory chronicle of her year of celibacy and its transformative impact on her relationships—to others, and to herself.

A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex

The Dry Season

Memoir meets craft masterclass in this “daring, honest, psychologically insightful” exploration of how we think and write about intimate experiences—“a must read for anybody shoving a pen across paper or staring into a screen or a past" (Mary Karr) In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller’s life and the questions which run through it. How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an author’s way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as “navel-gazing”—or else hailed as “so brave, so raw”? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her own path from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor—via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia—Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas—and occasional notes of caution—to anyone who has ever hoped to see themselves in a story.

Dziewczyństwo

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it.

David Brin

Sean Fitzpatrick

Tim Hanley

Joseph Sutton

Matt Bai

Mike Siegel

Jay Strongman

An Anthology of Essays

1984 in the 21st Century

" Être fille se hisse au rang des grandes œuvres féministes aux côtés des livres d'Adrienne Rich et de Maggie Nelson : intelligent, radical et original. " The New York Times Et si on cessait de se laisser dicter par d'autres ce que l'on vaut, ce qui est beau et ce qui est laid, ce qui est normal et ce qui est anormal, ce qui est dangereux et ce qui ne l'est pas ? Et si, au milieu de toutes ces injonctions sociales et patriarcales, on s'autorisait à garder, dans la maison de notre corps et de notre âme, une pièce fermée où vivre à notre guise, libres et à l'abri ? Pour mieux comprendre le conditionnement social qui marque l'existence des filles dès leur adolescence, et surtout pour s'en libérer, Melissa Febos a puisé dans sa propre histoire une puissante réflexion féministe sur le rapport au corps et à la sexualité, sur le consentement, sur les violences sexuelles mais aussi sur l'amour de soi et l'amour des autres, sur le pouvoir de la transmission et des récits que l'on partage. Un livre d'une grande beauté, aussi généreux que bouleversant, où chacune, et chacun aussi, pourra trouver du réconfort et entrevoir la perspective d'une vie plus libre, d'un monde où être fille ce serait enfin être soi...

Melissa Febos

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