Melissa Febos & Tara Westover

Melissa Febos discusses The Dry Season in conversation with Tara Westover — a memoir born from a year of celibacy that became, unexpectedly, the most fulfilling year of her life.

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Febos decided to take a three-month break from dating, relationships, and sex. Those three months became a year — one in which she discovered the distinct pleasures of solitude, the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction, and a lineage of feminist role models who had done the same: from eleventh-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen and Virginia Woolf to Octavia Butler, the Shakers, and Sappho.

Blending intimate personal narrative and incisive cultural criticism, The Dry Season is as much about celibacy as its inverse: pleasure, desire, and fulfillment. Febos is the national bestselling author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.