Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart, and the essay collection, Abandon Me. She is the winner of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary, The Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The BAU Institute, The Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and others. Her work has recently appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Believer, The Sewanee Review, and the New York Times. Her third book, Girlhood, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2021. She’s an associate professor and MFA director at Monmouth University and lives in Brooklyn.
Driving down Second Avenue, we saw the usuals: skater kids and college students, queens and models and junkies. My heart hurt more and more. The landmarks of my most troubled memories now filled my heart with longing. I even missed my ghosts.
We sit down with Sari Botton, long-time Rumpus contributor and author of our "Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me" column, to talk about her new anthology, Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, and more.
Susie DeFord and I both finished drafts of our books in 2007. My former dog-trainer and I had labored together at café tables side by side, but after the writing…