Body Work
By Melissa Febos
- Genre
- Art, Culture & Creative Life
- Publisher
- Catapult
- Publication year
- 2022
- ISBN
- 9781646220854
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative is a craft book by the essayist Melissa Febos, published by Catapult in March 2022. In four essays it argues for the literary seriousness of writing about the body, sex and trauma. An instant national bestseller, it was an NPR best book of 2022.
Part craft guide, part manifesto, Melissa Febos's Body Work makes an impassioned case for the personal essay as serious, difficult, even radical work. Across four essays she takes on the dismissals that trail confessional writing - that it is narcissistic, easy, unliterary - and dismantles them, insisting that writing honestly about the body, sex and trauma is both an art and a reckoning. Febos draws on her own life and on a wide range of writers to show how telling one's story can be an act of survival and of craft, not merely therapy. intendle recommends it to anyone who writes, or wants to write, from personal experience, and to readers curious about how such writing gets made. Slim and bracing, an instant national bestseller and an NPR best book of 2022, it has quickly become a fixture on writing syllabuses. A book that hands you both permission and a toolkit.