Letting the Body Speak: An Outtake from My Interview with Melissa Febos

"The urge of personal writers, particularly those of historically marginalized identities, is often an internalized sense of inferiority."

Earlier this week, my interview with Melissa Febos published over at Electric Literature. I’m including below, for paying subscribers, one question and response that got cut from the interview. Melissa’s new book Body Work came out earlier this week, and her previous book, Girlhood, just won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The question and answer below gives some interesting background on the writing of both books, and there are also some wonderful suggestions for writers and thinkers you might explore if you don’t know their work already.

Last year, I published a writing exercise inspired by some of Melissa’s craft work. The exercise dovetails nicely with my last post, on the postpartum trauma plot, and with some of the issues Melissa raises in her work.