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Gift credits Get creditsBody Work
The Radical Power of Personal Narrative
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“This book is both a self-reflection piece and a tender yet valiant meditation on the power of writing. Anyone that approaches their work through an autoethnographic lens would benefit from tools Febos so kindly lends to us in Body Work.”
— Eden Hakimzadeh • Oxford Exchange
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.
Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Whip Smart and the essay collections Abandon Me, which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, and Girlhood. The inaugural winner of the Jeanne Cordova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary, her work has appeared in publications including the Paris Review, the Sun, the Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, the Believer, the New York Times, McSweeney's, the New York Times Book Review, Lenny Letter, Elle, and Vogue. She curated the Mixer Reading and Music Series in Manhattan for ten years and served on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts for five. The recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, she is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.