Melissa Febos

Author · 9 books

Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was widely named a best book of 2017. Her third book, Girlhood, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2021. Febos is the inaugural winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the recipient of the 2018 Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, CNN, and Anderson Cooper Live; has taught at conferences and colleges nationwide; and has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, The BAU Institute, Ucross Foundation, and Ragdale. She is the recipient of an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program. Her essays have appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Paris Review, The Sun, The Believer, The Sewanee Review, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Vogue, The Guardian, The New York Times, and elsewhere.