Melissa Febos

♥️

Why did I love this? "Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of memoir as academic dissertation with memoir as blunt 'can we talk?' observations...Perhaps it’s just that she really knows how to frame and tell a story." My review of @melissafebos.bsky.social THE DRY SEASON in @wirobooks.bsky.social.

Ahhh thank you so much ♥️♥️♥️

Personally would love to hang w @halaayala.bsky.social in the sun

Also, I can't help recommending yet again @melissafebos.bsky.social 's brilliant essay, "Do You Want to Be Known For Your Writing, or For Your Swift Email Responses?":

magazine.catapult.co/how-to/stori...

#amwriting #amtranslating #freelancelifestyle #writingcomminity

Bad Faith | Dale Peck Andrew Sullivan first showed up on my radar in 1991, an innocuous blip that gave no indication of the full-frontal assault about to be launched on the American left. I was working for OutWeek at the…

Seems like a good time to reshare @dalepeck.bsky.social on Andrew Sullivan

Celebrating Intimacy of Self: Mauricio Ruiz interviews Melissa Febos MELISSA FEBOS <br> At the end of that year, I felt whole. I was ready for the kinds of growing that I could only do in conjunction with another person

"Writing is a form of alchemy that gives very bad decisions value in hindsight”

In a new interview, Melissa Febos (@melissafebos.bsky.social‬) speaks to Mauricio Ruiz about her year of celibacy, which is the subject of her new book, "The Dry Season." Check it out below!

A screenshot of text that reads:

 “The manner in which I had loved people was a symptom of how I moved through the world and understood my place in it. I had understood one of my life's tasks to be the management of others' perceptions of me. It was my job to attract them and then meet or placate their desires. I had performed this unconscious labor in every realm of social life. I had earned my living that way, my self-esteem, and my physical safety. It defined the silent economy of all my romantic relationships, which insisted that the rest of my life's passions must fit into the space cleared by a lover's satisfaction. My freedom was earned by their contentment. No one in possession of that ruthless part, whose first love was art, could sustain such a dynamic. Eventually, it exhausted me, the relationship collapsed, and I was on to the next. I had not invented it, but I could choose to set it down.”

A screenshot of text that reads: “This all sounds very rational, and the factor that most drove my endeavor was not rational. I felt it in my body like physical hunger, tugging on every cell. It felt biological. A pressure like that of sickness or fatigue. It was a desire that had finally grown stronger than its opposite, but was yet unknown. What did I want when I wanted the absence of something? It wasn't really time or a hob-by. I had no reference for the object of my hunger, and that was a strange condition. In my quietest moments, on the drive home from work, my body humming as I belted out a song about love, and just before I fell asleep or after I woke, I was just an animal with a past. I sensed how much I didn't know yet. I understood that an animal could be very hungry and not know for what, only in what direction it lay.”

Calling it now: @melissafebos.bsky.social’s THE DRY SEASON is the book of the summer

Melissa Febos on Stepping Outside the Sexual Economy - Electric Literature “The Dry Season” reframes celibacy as an opportunity to explore pleasure and joy

"It seems so much easier and sexier to have a big revelation but a big revelation contains no instructions for actual change."
@melissafebos.bsky.social on her new #book THE DRY SEASON

interviewed by @ninasharmawriter.bsky.social via @electricliterature.com

electricliterature.com/melissa-febo...

Frequency Illusion | Hazlitt Love was not a drink, and my pursuit of it did not fit perfectly into the rubric of addiction, but it had taken me.

hazlitt.net/feature/freq... @melissafebos.bsky.social

Great to chat with @melissafebos.bsky.social on the podcast. Enjoy a coffee-stained quote card, a CNF Pod original!

Celebrating Intimacy of Self: Mauricio Ruiz interviews Melissa Febos MELISSA FEBOS <br> At the end of that year, I felt whole. I was ready for the kinds of growing that I could only do in conjunction with another person

"I felt so whole and complete, and I do think that that’s part of what qualified me for a different kind of relationship"

Mauricio Ruiz interviewed Melissa Febos (@melissafebos.bsky.social‬) about her new book, "The Dry Season," and her year of celibacy. Check it out below!

buff.ly/kFU0Yjv

Harvard Book Store presents a discussion featuring Melissa Febos, with Alexander Chee, The Dry Season, a Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. Melissa Febos author of National Bestselling Memoir Girlhood. Wednesday June 11, 7pm Harvard Bookstore Cambridge MA Harvard.com

I’m in conversation with my beloved friend Melissa Febos at Harvard Book Store this Wednesday, 7m, to talk about her stunning new book, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. Please join us if you can.

Cambridge TONIGHT @melissafebos.bsky.social + @alexanderchee.bsky.social

Frequency Illusion | Hazlitt Love was not a drink, and my pursuit of it did not fit perfectly into the rubric of addiction, but it had taken me.

We have an excerpt from The Dry Season by @melissafebos.bsky.social up on the site today: hazlitt.net/feature/freq...

Melissa Febos + Leslie Jamison in conversation

Melissa Febos + Leslie Jamison

Kimberly Burns + Melissa Febos

@melissafebos.bsky.social + Leslie Jamison last night at Books are Magic / Public Records was the best kind of literary pandemonium! NYC: Don’t miss Melissa TONIGHT @strandbookstore.bsky.social with Stephanie Danler! (Even though it says sold out, go…they’ll make room for you!)

Happy #PubDay, @sgriest.bsky.social‬! 🖌️

ART ABOVE EVERYTHING, her global exploration of queer, BIPOC, and women artists who discuss the gifts, costs, and redemptive power of pursuing a creative life, is “a deep, moving, radical book.” — @melissafebos.bsky.social‬ buff.ly/y1mJfCw

Ahh can’t wait!

yup

Folks in LA please be careful and refer to this guide for protest gear from Hong Kong’s 2018 anti-extradition protest, in case you need some helpful, well-tested gear suggestions against heavily armed police that are liberal with tear gas.

♥️

At @memoirland.bsky.social I spoke with the one and only @melissafebos.bsky.social AND she took The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire. memoirland.substack.com/p/the-memoir...

Got to chat with @melissafebos.bsky.social and we had a pretty sweet jam sesh, not gonna lie, friend.

Listen wherever you get your pods, and be sure to check out the beefy shownotes.

brendanomeara.com/episode-472-...

Ah, thank you!!!! ♥️

'The best year of my life': How 12 months of celibacy changed the course of writer's life Author Melissa Febos joins Morning Joe to discuss her new book 'The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex'.

🎉 @melissafebos.bsky.social bringing inspiration and joy (remember those things?!) to @morningjoe-msnbc.bsky.social #THEDRYSEASON

My First Lover Was the Bathtub Faucet - Electric Literature An excerpt from “The Dry Season” by Melissa Febos

In this excerpt from Melissa Febos’s (@melissafebos.bsky.social‬) memoir “The Dry Season,” Febos explores her relationship with pleasure and convinces us of the ecstasy of abstinence.

buff.ly/n43eYXt

Pub day hardback photos 5 June 2025

Happy hardback publication day to these wonders!

LIFE CYCLE OF A MOTH – Rowe Irvin
THE DRY SEASON – @melissafebos.bsky.social
THE SEXUAL EVOLUTION – @nathanlents.bsky.social
THE ACID QUEEN – Susannah Cahalan
THE DEATH OF SHAME – @ambroseparry.bsky.social

buythebook.online/out-today

Episode 56: Abstinence & Horny Nuns with Melissa Febos The Feminist Present · Episode

A terrific interview @melissafebos.bsky.social. I’m looking forward to reading the book.

Listen to from The Feminist Present wherever you get your podcasts!

Listen to @melissafebos.bsky.social on The Feminist Present with @adriandaub.bsky.social and Laura Goode this morning and PHWOOF (in the best way). Brilliant conversation, recommended it immediately to my husband, AND it unlocked part of an essay I was in the middle of!

episodes.fm/1517251918/e...

Love to hear it!