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Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of five books, including the memoirs Whip Smart (2010) and The Dry Season (2025). Her essay collection Girlhood (2021) won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award.
She's had work featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Salon, Bomb, Hunger Mountain, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, Post Road, Dissent, Vogue, The Believer, The New Yorker, The Sewanee Review, Bitch Magazine, The Guardian, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Febos was born and raised in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Her father was a sea captain and her mother was a therapist. She left home at 16 years old, after passing the GED, and moved to Boston, where she worked an assortment of jobs including one as a boatyard hand and another as a chambermaid.
She attended night courses at Harvard Extension School before moving to New York City and enrolling in The New School in August 1999. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Writing/Literature. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Febos is the author of Whip Smart, published by St. Martin's Press in 2010, a memoir of her work as a professional dominatrix while she was studying at The New School. Her second book, the lyric essay collection Abandon Me, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on February 28, 2017. Abandon Me was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, and one of "The Best Reviewed Books of 2017" by Literary Hub.
In May 2018, Febos received the inaugural Lambda Literary Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. "The award goes to a writer committed to nonfiction work that captures the depth and complexity of lesbian/queer life, culture and/or history."
Her third book and second essay collection, Girlhood, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on March 30, 2021. It was a national bestseller. Describing Girlhood, The New York Times wrote, "The aim of this book, though, is not simply to tell about her own life, but to listen to the pulses of many others’...This solidarity puts “Girlhood” in a feminist canon that includes Febos’s idol, Adrienne Rich, and Maggie Nelson’s theory-minded masterpieces: smart, radical company, and not ordinary at all."
She was the co-curator, with Rebecca Keith, of the monthly Mixer Reading and Music series on the Lower East Side for ten years. A four-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Febos has received fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her essays have won awards from Prairie Schooner and StoryQuarterly, and for five years she was on the Board of Directors of Vida: Women in Literary Arts.
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Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of five books, including the memoirs Whip Smart (2010) and The Dry Season (2025). Her essay collection Girlhood (2021) won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award.
She's had work featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Salon, Bomb, Hunger Mountain, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, Post Road, Dissent, Vogue, The Believer, The New Yorker, The Sewanee Review, Bitch Magazine, The Guardian, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Febos was born and raised in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Her father was a sea captain and her mother was a therapist. She left home at 16 years old, after passing the GED, and moved to Boston, where she worked an assortment of jobs including one as a boatyard hand and another as a chambermaid.
She attended night courses at Harvard Extension School before moving to New York City and enrolling in The New School in August 1999. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Writing/Literature. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Febos is the author of Whip Smart, published by St. Martin's Press in 2010, a memoir of her work as a professional dominatrix while she was studying at The New School. Her second book, the lyric essay collection Abandon Me, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on February 28, 2017. Abandon Me was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, and one of "The Best Reviewed Books of 2017" by Literary Hub.
In May 2018, Febos received the inaugural Lambda Literary Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. "The award goes to a writer committed to nonfiction work that captures the depth and complexity of lesbian/queer life, culture and/or history."
Her third book and second essay collection, Girlhood, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on March 30, 2021. It was a national bestseller. Describing Girlhood, The New York Times wrote, "The aim of this book, though, is not simply to tell about her own life, but to listen to the pulses of many others’...This solidarity puts “Girlhood” in a feminist canon that includes Febos’s idol, Adrienne Rich, and Maggie Nelson’s theory-minded masterpieces: smart, radical company, and not ordinary at all."
She was the co-curator, with Rebecca Keith, of the monthly Mixer Reading and Music series on the Lower East Side for ten years. A four-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Febos has received fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her essays have won awards from Prairie Schooner and StoryQuarterly, and for five years she was on the Board of Directors of Vida: Women in Literary Arts.