In Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection- with family, lovers, and oneself--by investigating her relationships with both her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, and the sea captain who raised her. Woven throughout this collection is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer's life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart. Portions from Abandon Me have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, and the Center for Women Writers, and twice earned notice in the 2015 Best American Essays anthology. Febos serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is an assistant professor of creative writing at Monmouth University and on the M.F.A. faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in Brooklyn.
Zoe Zolbrod’s work has appeared in Salon, the Nervous Breakdown, the Weeklings, and the Rumpus. She is the author of the memoir The Telling and the novel Currency, which won a 2010 Nobbie Award. Zoe lives in Evanston with her husband, son, and daughter.
