Melissa Febos

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Beowulf Sheehan

Melissa Febos by Beowulf Sheehan

Melissa Febos

media release: 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.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart and two essay collections: Abandon Me, a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist and Publishing Triangle Award finalist, and Girlhood, a National Bestseller, which was released on March 30. Catapult will publish a collection of her craft essays, Body Work, in 2022. The inaugural winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The BAU Institute, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Foundation, and others; her essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Granta, Sewanee Review, Tin House, The Sun, and The New York Times. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.

The Wisconsin Book Festival is presented by Madison Public Library in partnership with Madison Public Library Foundation. For program details and the full schedule, go to wisconsinbookfestival.org.

The festival is funded with generous support from Signature Sponsor Marvin J. Levy; Presenting Sponsor Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation; Festival Patron Cheryl Rosen Weston Estate; Festival Sponsors National Endowment forthe Arts and American Girl’s Fund for Children; Contributing Sponsors The Bass Family, Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co., MG&E Foundation and University Research

Park; Media Sponsors The Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal, Isthmus, Madison365 and Wisconsin Public Radio; In-Kind Sponsors KennedyC and the Park Hotel; and Event Supporter A Room of One’s Own. Learn more about funding and support for the festival at wisconsinbookfestival.org/give.