A stunning series of pieces on the art and craft of writing. I wasn’t familiar with Febos’ work before reading this, and I’m really looking forward to exploring more.

I did not know what I expected when I picked up this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. Melissa Febos writes about personal narrative and the power we can have through that. As a therapist, I have seen how narrative and story can intimately shape people's lives. I enjoyed the length of this book, as it wasn't too long. At times, I do think concepts could have been expanded upon a bit more. Overall, I enjoyed this!

This book has been described as "memoir meets master craft" and that sums it up beautifully. Febos's vulnerability combined with her magnificent craftsmanship has resulted in a stunning piece of work. Febos is willing to share the most intimate details of her personal life in order to personally demonstrate to us the incredible power of memoir. Like her forerunner Mary Karr, Febos has an interesting, perhaps even shocking, life to share on the page, and also like Mary Karr, it's not just the salaciousness of the events and details that keeps us reading, but the way that these authors are able to share their stories and emotions with truth, vulnerability and intimacy. She also provides fantastic advice for any aspiring memoirist who wants to candidly share their own story while being mindful of how their own "freedom of expression" may affect others involved.

Give this freaking book all the stars. I loved this book so much that I had to buy my own copy. The way that Febos writes makes me believe I could go into the practice of writing. Febos challenged what I thought it meant to write and the considerations to write that we have for the people who we write about. Truly a masterclass in writing.

Melissa Febos has a way of writing that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about yourself, your body, and the world around you.

Ahhhh oh my gosh I LOOOOOOOVED this. I read it all in one sitting and I'm so hungry for more. I was anxious this would be a reckoning with the body alongside writing advice, which sounds painful to be honest, but it's so much more than that. it's a writer looking at her life and her talents and her body of work and graciously sharing what she's learned and enjoyed reading. She thinks deeply about her past work in a way that's inspiring to me. I haven't read Melissa Febos' work before (which is an oversight on my part, I own Abandon Me and have been meaning to read it for years.) I feel like this was an extremely cost-effective MFA class and like I'm not going to approach my own writing (or even reading) the same way having dug this deep. Love and recommend and know I'll be giving this as a gift to my writer friends in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Body Work was a complete surprise to me, as my first exposure to the work (maybe on a podcast?) presented it as a resource for writers. Febos is obviously passionate about her work, but her subject matter and her manner of expression is so far removed from my work that it wasn't relevant.

Body Work may be an uncommon entry into the writing of Melissa Febos. It happens to be where I started and it was a brilliant entry point. Many reviews have noted how this book on the craft of writing is so much more than just that and I agree. Body Work is incredibly rich and serves as a guide to much more than writing alone, also to authenticity itself. Febos traces for her readers an arc of tremendous growth as a person and a writer so that we might benefit from her lessons learned -- like a true teacher. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for access to the ARC.

“Writing is a form of freedom more accessible than many and there are forces at work in our society that would like to withhold it from those whose stories most threaten the regimes that govern this society. Fuck them. Write your life. Let this book be a totem of permission, encouragement, proof, whatever you need it to be.”

Despite Febos declaring that her book is not one, BODY WORK is absolutely a manifesto: for anyone who has doubted if their voice has worth, for anyone who has been told that their story doesn’t matter, for anyone whose presence has been consigned to the margins. It’s primarily a craft book, about the work of writing memoir, but with broad resonance for non-writers as well. Febos talks about the practical aspects of writing and publishing - how to write about sex, what to consider when describing real people in your text, the relationship between confession and memoir - in a way that’s intrinsically connected to the personal, emotional, transformative aspect of this kind of labor. It's a book that only someone who has done immense internal work can write, and she gives us the gift of showing both how writing itself facilitates that transformation and how she uses that internal evolution to make her work stronger. I loved what she had to say regarding the healing power, both individual and communal, of writing about trauma. It’s a bit strange to read this without having read her memoirs and essays, but I’m even more determined to get into GIRLHOOD, ABANDON ME, and WHIP SMART - and, despite not being a writer, intrigued about writing some of my own story. Thank you to Catapult for sending this brilliant book my way! Also, the audiobook is performed by the author herself and is beautifully done.

“We are writing the history that we could not find in any other book. We are telling the stories that no one else can tell, and we are giving this proof of our survival to each other.”

Content warnings: sexism, sexual harassment, sexual assault

This is my first time reading anything by Melissa Febos, and now I’ve vowed to become a Febos completist!

Body Work by Melissa Febos offers creative nonfiction essays about the vital importance of writing about trauma in a society that shames people into silence and the transformative internal work that goes along with reclaiming your story. We delve into how to write honestly about sex, how the process can make us more aware of the difference between internalized misogyny and our own truest desires, how to write about other people without destroying them or ourselves in the process, and some of the deeply spiritual aspects of writing.

While reading this book, I was also taking an online course in creative nonfiction. As a newbie, I felt frozen, staring at the blank page, questioning whether I could really write about trauma. I wanted to write about sex, queer sex, dissociation, growing up an unusually precocious and sensitive child, the pervasiveness of patriarchal oppression, and I needed to make it compelling and honest and to “excavate events for which I had been numb on the first go-around.” I saw myself in Febos, and seeing her thrive and heal and do so through writing gave me a framework to visualize what I want in my own creative life. Body Work found me at the exact moment I needed it most.

One of my favorite essays in Body Work is A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing About Other People. I feel relieved to have read this essay before publishing anything of note! Febos shared her own mistakes, regrets, and shifts in perspective with such insight that my own immaturity as a writer felt impossible to ignore. I had ideas for essays that had long been brewing that weren’t necessarily cruel nor untrue, but they could sting someone. Febos reminded me, “There are good essays that there are good reasons not to write,” but also, “…a difference in individual truths is not always a conflict. So long as we don’t try to speak for each other, there is room in our house for more than one story.”

I’m always looking for books that illuminate the experience of gifted children (a term that’s not always appealing, and yet we don’t have any other highly recognizable terms for intellectually advanced kids and adults), as these children tend to have difficulty seeing themselves reflected in the world. She describes her heightened perceptivity, openness to spiritual experience, early advanced reading and writing abilities:

“I wanted to be a writer very young because writer was the only role I could see myself occupying in society, the only one that might hold everything that I was: queer, overly emotional, burdensomely perceptive, reluctant to do any kind of work whose purpose was opaque to me, ravenous in ways that made me an outlier. It was an occupation that seemed to offer respite and relief, but also was connected to the sublime—it offered the gift of self-forgetting, a transcendence on the other side of which lay insight. I did not think to compare this with any description of religious experience, because I had not read any. Now, it seems obvious.”

My copy of Body Work is so laden with highlights, it’s impossible to pick out the most profound or exciting quotes. I felt magnetically drawn into the writing world of Febos with each essay. This book is like a course in itself, and I’m sure I’ll read it dozens of times over the next few years both to learn and measure my learning and just to hear the voice of someone who actually gets it…someone who has done the work, knows the work never ends, and sees transformation and art as necessary to one another.

I recommend this book to writers of all experience levels, and to anyone who has ever considered telling their own story through memoir. If you consider yourself an intersectional feminist, queer, contemplative, and literary, this book is a dreamscape of inspiration.

I have been a fan of Febos's for 10+ years after reading her debut Whip Smart. She is a master of the art of personal narrative writing. Her work includes a memoir, two essay collections, contributions to other collections, and now, with Body Work, a craft book on the technique of personal writing. Each one of her works is a mix of memoir, social science, philosophy, literary scholarship, and poetry.

Knowing that she’s a professor, I’ve sometimes daydreamed about leaving my life behind just to enroll in one of her courses. With Body Work, I got to vicariously do that. BW reclaims memoir writing as a political act and argues against the (misogynistic, racist) misnomer that it is merely publishing one’s diary. Part manifesto, part personal sharing, part technical guidance, and part history lessons, this is an enjoyable read for any nonfiction reader, regardless if you’ve ever considered writing.

This is one part craft book, one part memoir. The territory Febos covers here needs and warrants explanation, but in trying to function as memoir and craft book, it didn't quite hit the mark for me. I wanted either a personal essay collection or advice for writers on embodiment and writing the body, and greater connections between chapter topics. It mostly felt like a collection of themes and thoughts from the author.

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos is a thoughtfully-written collections of essays about writing our own stories. It is very academic and feminist and makes you consider your own experiences and how dominant society and culture color our perspective unless we actively fight against it. Febos ruminates on the craft of writing and about truth with its subjectivity tied to a person’s perspective. Overall, I found this incredibly fascinating and gave me food for thought, especially the parts where she goes over the possible ethical concerns about writing about other people and reframing our own stories through introspection. I am not a writer, but was an English major in college and lifelong feminist, so I really enjoyed this book.

Thank you Catapult + HighBridge Audio for providing this ebook + audiobook ARC.

Like all of Febos's work, this is an astounding collection, and it has so much that's deeply insightful, moving, and true. Drawing from a host of literary, psychological, sociological, and philosophical sources, she weaves a work that is, as the synopsis suggests, a deft blend of craft guide, memoir, and meditation on trauma, bias, and the legacies of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and patriarchy. It's very short, but it's very effective.

I loved this book, as both a craft book and as an essay collection. Like Melissa Febos' other books, her writing is wonderful and illuminating. Anyone who wants to write essays will get a lot out of this book. Readers who enjoyed Whip Smart, Abandon Me, and Girlhood will also enjoy this book, where Febos ruminates on her past works and her writing process.

What a gorgeous important book. As a female writer who writes about my own personal experiences, I am constantly thinking about so many of these questions related to privacy, intimacy, body-based trauma, how to hold multiple truths, and finding the story beneath the story beneath the story, I greatly appreciated the insight, nuance, and respect with which Febos addresses these topics. I wanted to underline every page.

A beautifully rendered reflection on not only the craft of writing (as art) but also teaching writing. Specific focus on memoir and creative nonfiction. Highly recommended for writers and teachers.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. Melissa Febos delivered yet another brilliant, vulnerable, and thought-provoking book. Though it was shorter than some of her others, it was no less powerful. I consider myself an amateur writer, but even if I didn't, I would find plenty to resonate within this well-researched and argued defense of the personal narrative. If you haven't read Febos yet, start at the beginning, because everything she does is fire.

Melissa Febos’ Body Work is part craft book and part memoir of a writing life. There is a lot to learn from Febos’ experiences for budding writers of nonfiction. I’m particular, I enjoyed “In Praise of Navel Gazing” a treatise on the value of women’s personal writing, so often dismissed as self indulgent and frivolous.

There is an abundance of rich lessons about writing and acceptance in this book. I was drawn to Body Work because of my research in memoir/autotheory and my curiosity about the book’s subtitle: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Febos delivers on that promise in many ways, from rejecting the dismissal of memoir as navel-gazing to celebrating the complexity and difficulty about writing about sex and relationships. She examines core questions of her writer’s life and themes that have been persistent in her work. She challenges the reader to dig into their own obsessions and fears and questions with the admission, “When I say that I have no regrets, it might sound arrogant. What I mean is that I have returned to the parts of my past that pained me and uncovered the aspects that I most wanted to avoid.” She demonstrates the value of cultivating insight on our past experiences and how essential that is to a writers identity.

I brought a lot of expectations to this book, with little context. While I was looking for more commentary/ analysis of personal narrative as a tool to be in conversation with others (kind of from that writerly or scholarly perspective), Febos appeals to a broader reader, particularly the audience she already knows she has. And hey, she’s smart to do that.