Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of five books, including the memoirs Whip Smart and The Dry Season (2025).

She's had work featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Salon, Bomb, Hunger Mountain, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Granta, Post Road, Dissent, Vogue, The Believer, The New Yorker, The Sewanee Review, Bitch Magazine, The Guardian, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her father was a sea captain and her mother was a therapist. She left home at 16 years old, after passing the GED, and moved to Boston, where she worked an assortment of jobs including one as a boatyard hand and another as a chambermaid. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Her second book, the lyric essay collection Abandon Me, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on February 28, 2017. Abandon Me was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, and one of "The Best Reviewed Books of 2017" by Literary Hub.

In May 2018, Febos received the inaugural Lambda Literary Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. "The award goes to a writer committed to nonfiction work that captures the depth and complexity of lesbian/queer life, culture and/or history." It was a national bestseller. Describing Girlhood, The New York Times wrote, "The aim of this book, though, is not simply to tell about her own life, but to listen to the pulses of many others’...This solidarity puts “Girlhood” in a feminist canon that includes Febos’s idol, Adrienne Rich, and Maggie Nelson’s theory-minded masterpieces: smart, radical company, and not ordinary at all." Each of the book's essays features an illustration by artist Forsyth Harmon.

She was the co-curator, with Rebecca Keith, of the monthly Mixer Reading and Music series on the Lower East Side for ten years. A four-time MacDowell Colony fellow, Febos has received fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her essays have won awards from Prairie Schooner and StoryQuarterly, and for five years she was on the Board of Directors of Vida: Women in Literary Arts. Kirkus Reviews starred review described the book as a "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... She further points out that memoirists do not publish raw therapeutic diaries but crafted literary works with the power to change the world." Cleveland Review of Books noted that the collection "examines the intersection of trauma, art-making, and social change. The book is a call to action, a protest song, an organizing principle, and perhaps the only book you need on memoir writing."

The Dry Season, her second memoir, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2025. The book received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, which noted: "Although a book about abstention, at its essence this story is about understanding, reclaiming, and celebrating pleasure, rendered sublimely and with wit. A gorgeous and thought-provoking memoir about how celibacy can teach us about love."

Febos has taught at SUNY Purchase College, the Gotham Writers' Workshop, The New School, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Utica College. Until 2020, she was an Associate Professor and MFA Director at Monmouth University. She currently holds the Roy J. Carver Professorship at the University of Iowa, where she is Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program.

Reception Abandon Me was one of "The Best Reviewed Books of 2017."

Girlhood was featured on Morning Joe on MSNBC, and was well-reviewed by NPR. Girlhood won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Body Work, was a national bestseller and Los Angeles Times Bestseller.

Her fifth book, The Dry Season, was featured on TIME Magazine's "The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025" and Vulture's "The Best Books of 2025." It was a finalist for the 2026 Lambda Literary Awards for Lesbian Memoir/Biography.

Personal life Febos is queer. She lives in Iowa with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly.

She spoke at House of SpeakEasy's Seriously Entertaining program about her childhood and rethinking often-normalized experiences of bullying.

Awards 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellowship 2011 MacDowell Colony Fellowship 2013 Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Prize 2013 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fellowship 2014 Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship 2015 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space Residency 2015 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship 2017 Ragdale Residency 2018 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Sarah Verdone Writing Award 2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist in Memoir/Biography 2018 finalist for the Judy Grahn Award 2018 Jeanne Córdova Prize 2018 BAU Institute Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation 2018 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship 2021 MacDowell Colony Fellowship 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction