... an explanation of why stories like Febos’s are powerful, and moreover, why they take so much work. In their attempts to write in the confessional form, my students inevitably encounter dilemmas—including struggles over sentence sequencing and the fear of problematic ex-boyfriends reading their work—that Febos wants to help resolve.

In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel. That trauma narratives should somehow be over—we’ve had our fill.

Although the essays in what is arguably [Febos'] latest act of service to that questionable project are all personal narratives themselves (as opposed to straight-up craft essays with clear dos and don'ts for the aspiring or practicing writer), they also provide practical and philosophical arguments for the expansiveness that such narratives allow and for their power in the world.

A lazy categorization would describe Body Work as 'part memoir, part craft book, part literary treatise.' But Febos’s work defies this kind of segmentation. Each of her books contains multitudes, seamlessly coalesced into a single truth-seeking missile. Her trademark magic is in the melding.

... a call to action, a protest song, an organizing principle, and perhaps the only book you need on memoir writing. Its style, subject, and thesis reminds me of the work of Hilma af Klint, an abstract painter who created her work through a process that straddled scientific research and divination. Both Febos and af Klint share the belief that art should be in service of liberation, of creating a more just and equitable society. And for the most part, their strategies to achieve liberation are in harmony.

... a call to action, a protest song, an organizing principle, and perhaps the only book you need on memoir writing. Its style, subject, and thesis reminds me of the work of Hilma af Klint, an abstract painter who created her work through a process that straddled scientific research and divination. Both Febos and af Klint share the belief that art should be in service of liberation, of creating a more just and equitable society. And for the most part, their strategies to achieve liberation are in harmony.

As a writing instructor I found myself underlining passage after passage, eager to read them aloud to my own nonfiction students who oohed and ahhed in recognition, just as I’d expected.

I hoped Body Work would offer tools, exercises, questions, organizing principles, and creative approaches to building a story in sentences and paragraphs, the stuff that makes up a masterclass. At the very least I wanted something that would legitimize calling the collection of these four essays a craft book.

For Febos, personal narrative is a literary endeavour. Of the many texts on the subject, this one feels most engaging and timely.

Organized into four slim chapters that cover, among other subjects, writing about other people and writing about sex, it answers many of the questions that readers of Febos’ earlier work might have about those books.

... concise yet weighty work.

... envelops readers in a generously healing vision of memoir writing. Melissa Febos teaches us that we can embrace personal writing as a way of growing through immense pain, and that writing will guide us—physically, emotionally, spiritually, politically—toward that version of ourselves we need to become..

Febos dedicates her latest book to her students. After reading the book in one sitting, I feel as though I am one of them, a kind of disciple of the author’s patience and deep well of wisdom.

Staying true to her message that writing about the self can make for great and even transcendent art, Febos includes many gripping personal anecdotes in a book that remains instructive to its core. Above all, Febos offers the space and tools to reflect, rethink, revisit, and reimagine—in service of good writing, and good living—with grains of truth that reader-writers will want to keep close..

Febos’s newest book is not a story about her body; rather, it is written through and with her sexual and physical experiences in such a way that it radically destabilizes boundaries between meaning, intelligibility, corporeality, intimacy, and so much more—all through the practice of storytelling. This is a book for both writers and readers who feel like their bodies are telling stories, even if they do not ever want to put those stories into words.

Whip-smart.

Febos takes no prisoners in this strongly worded manifesto—despite her claim on the first page that it is not a manifesto. In fact, her impassioned theses and proclamations about writing are exactly that.