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Melissa Febos

Biography

Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir WHIP SMART and two essay collections: ABANDON ME and GIRLHOOD. 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.

Melissa Febos

Books by Melissa Febos

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.