2016 was a pivotal year for Fiona Helmsley, and on the eve of her 40th birthday, an old friend questioned the subject matter of her writing: why, so often, did Fiona reflect back on the questionable choices she made when she was younger—wasn't 40 a good age to "grow up" and move on to more mature subject matter? A few months after her friend's question, a much more monumental, catastrophic event occurred: professional ignoramus Donald J. Trump was elected president; the '80s, the decade Fiona had grown up in, had ascended to the Oval Office, big time. In Girls Gone Old Fiona Helmsley doesn't answer her friend's question so much as she subverts it. With new essays about the confluence of '80s television, art, and sexual fantasy; addiction and illness; school shootings and serial killers; family; Andy Warhol; and the sleazy (yet sexy) misogyny of Axl Rose, Girls Gone Old rebukes the notion of the self as a lesser muse. "Girls Gone Old is timely, not only in regard to its unabashed third and fourth wave feminism. The essays collected here cover pop culture icons, class and wealth, addiction, rape culture, even the popularity of Donald Trump. On this last, she writes, "I think this is the real divide in this country: the social principles of empathy, vs the social principles of greed." It is this kind of insight, discovered through the laying bare of her own actions and decisions, that makes Girls Gone Old so admirable."—Sara Rauch, BUST "Much of the action in Girls Gone Old, the provocative essay collection by Fiona Helmsley, goes down in New York City in the 1990s—when St. Mark's Place was still the epicenter of cool, before the internet ruined everything. Helmsley lived the gritty East Village life most of us were too scared to live, and the triumph of her collection lies in her ability to convey both the horrors of that time and place, as well as the singular appeal. We might yearn for a lost Gotham we never really experienced; Helmsley's nostalgia, or rather nostalgie de la boue, is all too real."— Greg Olear