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Melissa Febos

Biography

Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos is the nationally bestselling author of five books, including GIRLHOOD --- which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism --- and BODY WORK: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Library, the Black Mountain Institute, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Sewanee Review, New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly.

Melissa Febos

Books by Melissa Febos

The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
by Melissa Febos - Memoir, Nonfiction

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break. For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships and sex. Ever since her teens, Febos had been in one relationship after another with men and women. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster. Over those first few months, Febos gleaned insights into her past. She decided to extend her celibacy, not knowing it would become the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life. No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, she learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the distinct pleasures unmediated by lovers, and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt.

Girlhood
by Melissa Febos - Essays, Nonfiction

When her body began to change at 11 years old, Melissa 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. In GIRLHOOD, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power and pleasure that women have long been taught to deny.