Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart: The True Story of a Secret Life, and the essay collection Abandon Me: Memoirs. Her third book, Girlhood, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2021. She is the winner of the Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction from LAMBDA Literary and the Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the BAU Institute, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Vermont Studio Center, among other places. Her work has recently appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Sewanee Review, and The New York Times. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.