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melissafebos.bsky.social
Melissa Febos
@melissafebos.bsky.social
3.3K followers 340 following 120 posts
Author of five books—next up The Dry Season 6/3/25

Thoughts my own and not representing any institution.

https://linktr.ee/melissafebos
melissafebos.com
https://www.prairielights.com/pre-order-dry-season-june-2025-prairie-lights-0
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Melissa Febos
prairielights.com
Join us tonight at 7 pm for a double feature reading by @melissafebos.bsky.social and @donikakelly.bsky.social!
November 5, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
gwoltjer.bsky.social
@melissafebos.bsky.social comes out swinging in her essay “Nothing is Gayer than My Love for Women’s Basketball.” I wasn’t fully prepared to have the collection begin with such storytelling awesomeness.
October 16, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
bradlisti.bsky.social
Today on the program, my guest is @melissafebos.bsky.social, author of THE DRY SEASON: A MEMOIR OF PLEASURE IN A YEAR WITHOUT SEX. @aaknopf.bsky.social

🎧 Available wherever you get your podcasts.
October 5, 2025 at 5:41 PM
melissafebos.bsky.social
Ah, I’m so glad!
shannonkellydonahue.com Shannon Kelly Donahue @shannonkellydonahue.com · Oct 4
Just came from @melissafebos.bsky.social's Memoir for the Apocalypse class through Corporeal Writing, and my synapses are firing. A lot of craft talks fall flat for me. Melissa's always get me back into my groove and writing fearlessly. This one in particular hit the spot!
October 4, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
crimewatch.bsky.social
Fuck Freud.

@melissafebos.bsky.social
September 28, 2025 at 12:24 PM
melissafebos.bsky.social
Honored to be in this year’s anthology!
triumphbooks.bsky.social Triumph Books @triumphbooks.bsky.social · Sep 3
Hanif Abdurraqib has curated an extraordinary collection showcasing incredible feats and diverse perspectives across the world of sports. We're honored to announce this year's featured writers! Pre-order The Year's Best Sports Writing 2025 today: buff.ly/7gs9meT
This year's featured writers: Lex Pryor Kim Cross Frankie de la Cretaz Melissa Febos Daniel Ray Zito Madu Kaveh Akbar Devin G. Kelly Mac Crane Maitreyi Anantharaman Nick Hunt Katie Barnes Leyton Cassidy Zack Davis Helena Gjone Yousra Samir Imran Giri Nathan Amos Barshad Jamie Nesbitt Golden Roman Stubbs Katie Heindl Mychal Denzel Smith Lisa Williamson Rosenberg Imogen West-Knights Darrell Powell Simon Akam James Thomas Niharika Pandit Ettore Ewen (Big E) Peter Flax
September 3, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
anntashislater.bsky.social
Melissa Febos is one of the fiercest, most brilliant writers I know, with a gift for seeing straight to the heart of things. I'm grateful for her generous words about TRAVELING IN BARDO. @melissafebos.bsky.social

Out 9/9 from Balance/Hachette! Pre-order: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ann-t...
August 18, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
jbywrites.bsky.social
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.
July 21, 2025 at 4:14 PM
melissafebos.bsky.social
Personally would love to hang w @halaayala.bsky.social in the sun
pw.org Poets & Writers @pw.org · Jul 15
Two summer books from well-seasoned writers to enjoy in the sun: I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (@avidreaderpress.bsky.social) by Hala Alyan & The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex (@aaknopf.bsky.social) by @melissafebos.bsky.social. #PageOne at.pw.org/PageOne2025x4
July 15, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
lawrenceschimel.bsky.social
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
Do You Want to Be Known For Your Writing, or For Your Swift Email Responses?
magazine.catapult.co
June 30, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
catfitzpatrick.net
Seems like a good time to reshare @dalepeck.bsky.social on Andrew Sullivan
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…
thebaffler.com
June 26, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
commonmag.bsky.social
"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!
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
buff.ly
June 23, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
janajm.com
Calling it now: @melissafebos.bsky.social’s THE DRY SEASON is the book of the summer
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.”
June 24, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
quincyscottjones.bsky.social
"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...
Melissa Febos on Stepping Outside the Sexual Economy - Electric Literature
“The Dry Season” reframes celibacy as an opportunity to explore pleasure and joy
electricliterature.com
June 18, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
ankurthakkar.com
hazlitt.net/feature/freq... @melissafebos.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.
hazlitt.net
June 17, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
brendanomeara.bsky.social
Great to chat with @melissafebos.bsky.social on the podcast. Enjoy a coffee-stained quote card, a CNF Pod original!
June 16, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
commonmag.bsky.social
"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
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
buff.ly
June 16, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
alexanderchee.bsky.social
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.
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
June 10, 2025 at 3:19 AM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
kimberlyburns.bsky.social
Cambridge TONIGHT @melissafebos.bsky.social + @alexanderchee.bsky.social
alexanderchee.bsky.social Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · Jun 10
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.
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
June 11, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
hazlitt.bsky.social
We have an excerpt from The Dry Season by @melissafebos.bsky.social up on the site today: hazlitt.net/feature/freq...
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
June 11, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
kimberlyburns.bsky.social
@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!)
Melissa Febos + Leslie Jamison in conversation Melissa Febos + Leslie Jamison Kimberly Burns + Melissa Febos
June 10, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
beaconpress.bsky.social
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
June 10, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
ourobororoboruo.bsky.social
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.
June 7, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
saribotton.bsky.social
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...
June 6, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Melissa Febos
brendanomeara.bsky.social
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-...
June 6, 2025 at 6:58 PM