Books

10 Essential Books About Writing

Must-read titles for writers include works by Elena Ferrante, Akwaeke Emezi, Meg Wolitzer, Yoko Ogawa, and more.

When #MeToo Was a Blank Canvas: Joy McCullough Wants Teens to Know About Artemisia Gentileschi

Joy McCullough’s novel Blood Water Paint offers a stunning portrait of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Read more »

Abby Maslin’s Personal Tragedy Turned Her Marriage into a Mission

In 2012, Abby Maslin’s husband was randomly assaulted with a baseball bat after a night out with friends. Read more »

Piece of Cake: Helen Oyeyemi’s "Gingerbread" Is a Delightful Feast

Helen Oyeyemi’s new novel, Gingerbread, takes on the deeper question behind Hansel and Gretel’s story. Read more »

Let It All Out: Laurie Halse Anderson on #MeToo and the Journey from "speak" to "SHOUT"

In 1999, author Laurie Halse Anderson told the story of her sexual assault in her radical, bestselling young-adult novel speak, and in doing so gave a generation of teens and young adults a vocabulary for consent and rape. Read more »

Backtalk: YA’s Cancel Culture

This week, Dahlia and Amy dig into the world of YA drama. Recently, two YA authors have chosen to cancel their own debut novels after being called out by some readers for “problematic” issues in the text. Dahlia and Amy talk about the effects of a cancel culture that demands perfect art. Also, a... Read more »

Less Fear, More Queer: What’s Missing from a New Book on Sex, Shame, and Christianity

Shameless gives queer people little space to talk about their own visions of healthy, spiritual sexuality. Read more »

Prodigal Daughter: Samantha Allen Shines a New Light on Queer Communities in Red States

Queer people are here—or there, as the case may be—and aren’t going away. Read more »

When Faking It Is a Form of Self-Protection

For every op-ed lamenting the “death of the chase,” there’s a literary work that considers the nuanced realities of female sexual experience. Read more »

Shelf Love: How A.N. Devers Created a Feminist Paradise for Bibliophiles

In London’s bustling Soho neighborhood, A.N. Devers’s feminist paradise for bibliophiles is thriving—and changing the way collectors think about the literary canon. Read more »

Pages

Eat, Pray, Spend: Priv-Lit and the New, Enlightened American Dream

Even as reports on joblessness, economic recovery, and home foreclosures suggest that no one is immune to risk during this recession, the popularity of women’s wellness media has persisted and, indeed, grown stronger.  Read more »

Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: A Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens

What happens when two great black women fiction writers get together to talk about race in young adult literature? That's exactly what happens... Read more »

A Look at How Media Writes Women of Color

Nearly every Saturday morning, feminists of color hold Twitter discussions taking a deeper look at issues, such as gender violence. It’s the... Read more »