Open Book

Episode 8: Melissa Febos

July 30, 2025

Author Melissa Febos (The Dry Season) opens up about her first addiction: books. Then we hear why it's important to read "books of the people," which includes her favorite micro-genre of “airport romantasy." Plus, Melissa recommends some of her favorite sex writing.

Show Notes

Melissa Febos is the author of five books, including Girlhood, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and most recently, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex.

Melissa and Elena discuss:

• Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

• Elena’s personal re-read, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

• Melissa’s pleasure reading, which she also calls “books of the people,” The Empyreon Series by Rebeccca Yarros and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

• The New York Review Book series, from which Melissa raves about Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt

• Elena’s suggestion for a writer of literary mystery, Patricia Highsmith, author of The Price of Salt

• Melissa’s most recommended literary mystery, Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry

• A male writer whose work Melissa will still read, Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom

• The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

Some of Melissa’s favorite sex writing:

• Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls

• Jeanette Winterson, author of Written on the Body, Sexing The Cherry, and The Passion

See a comprehensive list of books referenced on Open Book at powells.com/list/open-book-live-wire.

• Full Transcript

  Elena Passarello: Hi there, this is writer Elena Passarello, and welcome to Open Book, a literary podcast from Live Wire Radio brought to you by Powell's Books, where we talk to writers about their reading habits. Now, when I'm not having fun being Live Wire's announcer, writing is my job. I am the author of two books, and I'm currently writing a third one, which explains why my home office... Is a mess of printer paper and tupperware and an old yoga mat that I just used to curl up into the fetal position for like several hours at a time. I also teach writing here in Oregon. And all of this is to say that books are without exaggeration, my whole life. I even started a book club with my three cats which is kind of frustrating because they never do the reading. This week on Open Book, I'm talking to one of my favorite writers slash people, Melissa Febos. Melissa is the bestselling author of several books, including Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work, the radical power of personal narrative. Melissa also teaches writing at the University of Iowa, so she reads a lot. Her latest book is The Dry Season, a memoir of pleasure in a year without sex. And one of the pleasures she experiences, of course, is books. That's what we're gonna talk about, along with the ins and outs of a book tour. How to reset your reading brain when you read for work all day, and a genre that was new to me called airport romantasy. This is Melissa Febos on Open Book. Melissa, welcome to Open Book. 

  Melissa Febos: Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. 

  Elena Passarello: I'm not kidding you. You're one of my favorite people in book world. 

  Melissa Febos: I feel exactly the same way.  

  Elena Passarello: Do you remember when we met, because I do. 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah. I remember that you referred to yourself as someone who evokes a Cracker Barrel waitress, and I was like, I like this lady. 

  Elena Passarello: I don't remember that. I remember you were sitting, it was at this kind of writing retreat in New Hampshire, and you were on some stairs, and there was a bike next to you, and I was like, oh, this is the postcard. Like, I'd just driven in, and I was like oh, they made the post card for me so that I knew I was in the right place.

  Melissa Febos: No, I remembered that I thought upon first meeting exactly what I think now, which is that you were hilarious and brilliant and really, really fun. 

  Elena Passarello: Well, this first question worked out really good. I was hoping to be festooned with compliments. Now, had you written a book when we met 15 years ago? 

  Melissa Febos: I think I had just published my first book like a few months before that. And that was my first residency. So I was like a little bit shell shocked when I arrived because I was like, Whoa, what is a residency? But also like, who am I? Do I have a body? 

  Elena Passarello: All the things that we ask ourselves when someone gives us the time to sit and write. That's right. There's a great writing residency scene in your new book, by the way, Dry Season. We're not here to talk about your books, Melissa. We're here to about the books that you read. Tell me what you were like as a reader when you were little, Melissa? 

  Melissa Febos: I was like a... crackhead reader. And I say that not really metaphorically. Like I was, I'm an addict. I've been in recovery for 21 years. And I think that reading was literally my first drug. I like, I read so much that in the beginning they were like, cool, she's a reader. She's a love of literature. It's so nice. And then they were, like, ah, have you been outside today? Did you sleep last night? Like I really was looking like a tweaker because I would stay up all night reading under the covers of the flashlight. And like, reading inside of my school books. Like I was super, super obsessive. 

  Elena Passarello: Were you one of those people who would like in the bathroom, like read the shampoo bottle, just to have print to ingest? 

  Melissa Febos: I actually, when I was a kid, couldn't poop unless I was reading. Like I would read the toothpaste, the shampoo bottle, anything. 

  Elena Passarello: What do you think that is? I think about it now, like, you know, we don't like it when people always are scrolling on their phones, like they sit still. But there is this version of that. I also was this person where it was like, I need to have some, I need to be looking at text right now, at printed text. I don't know. I mean, I don't think that's necessarily what a writer is. 

  Melissa Febos: No, I think I was just like a sensitive person with like various strains of mental illness in my genetics, and life was just sort of too much and other people were too much and I kind of needed an out and books and printed text was available everywhere. 

  Elena Passarello: That's true. Now, when I say books you read as a child, what are the first things that are popping into your head right now? 

  Melissa Febos: I thought it was Clan of the Cave Bear. Because that wasn't the first book I read, but I think that was one of the first adult books that I read. And I don't know if you remember Clan of the Cave Bear. [Elena: A little racy, right?] Quite racy. In fact, I remember reading it, and it was my mother's book, so like, she knew what was in it, right. But I was like, oh, I read this book, putting it back on her shelf, and she was like oh, masturbation material, and I was oh no, she knows! Yeah, but I just read anything. I read books that now, I think I would be too bored, and I would actually stop halfway through. But as a kid, it was, I was just. Totally omnivorous, up for anything. Reading books like weird British novel, I'm just like, I must not have understood anything in there but I was up for it. 

  Elena Passarello: Were you a re-reader? 

  Melissa Febos: Absolutely. I'm still a re reader but I wouldn't let myself do it for a while because I got infused with this weird capitalist sort of approach where I was like, oh, I'm gonna die and I can't, I have to read as many books as possible. And then my wife, Danika, who's like so smart in this way, was like what are you talking about? Why would you, you constantly start books and then give up on them? Why don't you just read something you know is good? Like, we're all gonna die. You're not even gonna touch the world's literatures. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah, you're not even going to come close. [Melissa: What do you reread?] I reread The Sound and the Fury a lot. [Melissa: Oh, nice.] I rereads. Right now, I'm writing. I'm in the throes of a book, so I'm not doing a ton of reading that isn't for that. But I am rereading kind of the same. I'm finding, and this is a question that I really wanted to ask you. We've asked it a couple of times on this podcast, which is how writing a book changes the way you read, right? Since you've had five, I think this could be a multifaceted answer. But to answer my question myself, Like, for me... Writing a book has made me more forgetful as a reader, I think, because you always have to cram all this text into your head. I have to have like a sherpa with me, like a book where I'm writing down the things that happen that I want to remember, or I have have to like an auxiliary recording device. So tell me, Fifth Book Febos, I think we're calling it, how has writing your book, especially this many books, changed the way that you work as a reader? 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, I think in the same way that you just described, where there is a kind of like mercenary reading that I've learned to do from research as like books, I write books where I do a lot of research for them as you do. And you have to really like gut a book. Like you have tonight to just get in there, get into the guts and get out with what you need. And that's not a great way to read, but it is sometimes necessary. So it's like, I'm glad I know how to do that, but I need to like really analog go in and like change the settings in my brain when I'm reading something not for work so that I can actually absorb every sentence. So I think in that way, but I will say also that writing books, because I've read so much heavy like theory and history, just like not fun stuff, but interesting stuff, it has made me a little more generous with myself in my pleasure reading where like I just read. Whatever I want. Like I actually hit sort of, I don't even want to say a new low because it's so judgmental, but I have like broken the seal on like hyper-popular airport romantic series books. And I'm like, I think even five years ago, I would have been like, oh, no, no. Right. Sorry, I'm too smart to read those books. I couldn't possibly be reading the same book as this, you know, whoever next to me on the airplane. 

  Elena Passarello: What, tell me the appeal of, I've never read a romantasy book. 

  Melissa Febos: I never had before either, and then I was at a residency. The trashiest reading I read is while I am working the hardest at my own work, actually, because I'm putting so much brain into that that afterwards I'm just like, I need pure, just like shoot it into my jugular, the pleasure and the escape of it. And so I read, I started with this dragon series called the Empyrean series, and it's, what is it? Iron Flame is one of them. I can't remember what the first one is called, but they're terrible. But she knows how to do, they're there. You know, a friend of mine just earlier today compared them to pornography, where it's like they have one job and they do it really well, but everything else in them is quite bad. 

  Elena Passarello: Right, but the thing that you want. 

  Melissa Febos: I cry, I become aroused, like, it's like a literal rollercoaster inside of me of like sensory experience reading these books. And I just, I just do think that being like a college professor and the author of five books should make me immune to simple pleasures of the hoi poi, but it absolutely doesn't. In fact, I am so into it. And then when it finished, I was so bereft that I moved on to the next, the fairy series. The fucking fairies. It's just fairies fucking and warring. It's amazing. [Elena: So they fight.] A court of thorns and roses. You've seen it. [Elena: Oh, Sarah Moss, right?] Yes. [Elena: Sarah Moss.] Yes, and this one I actually can recommend because the writing is actually palatable. Like not good, but you can, don't let Sarah Moss I'm sorry if you're listening to this. I'm sure you're not, but it's, I feel better about myself reading these books. They're also the genders, the gendering of the characters is a little less cartoonish and that feels better too, but anyway, I don't know how I got so deep into this, So here we are. 

  Elena Passarello: I think it's good. I mean, I think it's, I will always want to preserve the part of myself that wants to read things that like you go on a cruise, I don't really want to go on a cruise but you go in some kind of a thing where people are reading like a beachfront and there are like six people that are reading the same book. It's the song of the summer, but it's the book of the summer. I don't ever want to be in a place as a writer or a teacher where I can't engage with that. Unless it's like fascist or whatever. Totally. I always want to keep that. I don't know, is it insulting to call it like a popcorn book, beach book? That value is a value. 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah. And I consider it a sign of my maturation as a human being that I know, because when I was younger, that was not the vibe. When I was young, I was like, no, if everybody likes it, I can't take. And now I'm like, yeah, I am part of the people. I am a person. So I am. And give me the simple pleasure. Give me the easy to digest escapist pleasure. I need it more than ever. 

  Elena Passarello: And it feels so good to be with other people when they're doing something. It's so fun to talk about, yeah. So you are touring your book right now, which means that that part is done and the windup and all the things that you have to write. So maybe you have a little extra time to read now.  

  Melissa Febos: I do. I actually saved the last fairy book. I forced myself to stop. I can't believe I'm talking about this in a recording. I've grown, even in the last year. Because I wouldn't say, people would be like, what are you reading? And I would just have like the last literary novel I read to pull out of my pocket and I wouldn't mention the dragon books. But now I'm out. I'm outta the closet. There's no going back. But I saved a fairy book, but I'm also reading a very, I truly am also reading a very depressing New York review of books. So I have my dignity. 

  Elena Passarello: The New Yorker Review Book Series. 

  Melissa Febos: Susie Boyt's Loved and Missed. Oh God, Dagger in the Heart, it's so good. [Elena: When is it?] It is so good, but it's like, I think it was published like in the 70s and it was just reissued, but it's beautiful. [Elena: A novel?] Yeah. 

  Elena Passarello: And it's a heart wrenching novel. 

  Melissa Febos: It's a heart-wrenching novel. It's just about like a mother with an adult child in London and her daughter is a drug addict and she ends up raising her daughter's daughter. And it's just like funny and beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking. 

  Elena Passarello: London in the 70s has like a chasm of grit and harrowing. 

  Melissa Febos: It is very gritty, yeah. Yeah, it's great. 

  Elena Passarello: And so you've kind of marshmallow tested the fairy book and then you have this other book. 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, so I have the fairy book. I'm going to save it till the end of tour. So I'm still reading real novels at this point in the tour, but I'm only three days in. So by the end of the week, it'll probably be back to the fucking fairies. 

  Elena Passarello: Do you buy a book at every book? That's the title of that back to the fucking fairies with most of you. Do you buy a book at every bookstore you visit?

  Melissa Febos: No, I used to do that. But then I've donated so many books that I just can't. And I also am middle-aged now. And so I have a bad back. And I needed to bring a suitcase that I could actually lift myself without suffering severe injury. So I brought a carry-on suitcase for like a month of tour. And someone gave me a tote bag at one of my earlier readings. And I actually had to give it away. I was like, this doesn't fit. 

  Elena Passarello: You gotta travel super light. I think I saw this on social media, you have like a tour suit. Like, uh... 

  Melissa Febos: I have two suits. These are the pants of one of them. 

  Elena Passarello: Oh yeah, and they're a very wrinkle-resistant kind of seersucker maybe? 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, it's like a black seersucker, and then I have a green and cream striped classic seersuckers with a little check. 

  Elena Passarello: So the book, The Dry Season, congratulations on this book. I feel like you are our champion of memoir, Melissa Febos. You stand up for it in your writing and in your advocacy and as a literary citizen, like a memoir has like such a fighter in you. 

  Melissa Febos: A friend did ask me at lunch today, cause I told him that I was writing two novels and he was like, what about people are gonna feel betrayed. 

  Elena Passarello: You're Dylan going electric. Oh, no. Melissa: We'll see.] So, this new memoir, the kind of time frame of the memoir is this year of voluntary celibacy. And this was like nine years ago, yeah? What did you find yourself reading during that period of time? Not for the book. The book has a ton of books in it, but like when you were actually living that period. 

  Melissa Febos: Oh, oh, that's an even better question because I've been talking about the research for the book a lot, which is a bunch of nuns. [Elena: Great.] Totally excellent. Yeah, much sexier than anyone knows except people who know word. 

  Elena Passarello: I learned so much about hot nuns from your book, honestly. 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, there's a lot of hot and hot material, but that's not what I was reading in my pleasure time and it was so pleasurable like I really when I took this break I had been in non-stop monogamous relationships basically for 20 years and I just said it never occurred to me that being partnered impinged on my reading and now it makes perfect sense Like of course as well as another person there with all their needs and their consciousness. So like yeah less reading time, right? But But when I was celibate, I just would like, I bought this rug, this white shag rug, and I would like lie on the rug with these pillows, and I was just read for like whole afternoons. And it actually reminded me exactly of when I was a kid, and I remember looking at my parents when I as a kid and being like, these people never read, it's so sad. What's wrong with them? And they were like, we have jobs. You little miscreant. And I also have a job, but like not in the summer. And so I just would lie and read for like seven hours in a row, and it was mostly mysteries. I love mysteries. I love literary mysteries... [Elena: Like Patricia Highsmith, or?] I like Patricia Highsmith, but there's too many men in her books, actually. It's all these like horrible men sort of doing horrible things to each other, which there's a certain pleasure to that, but I just get tired of hearing them talk even on the page. And so, I actually keep a Google doc of all of the mysteries that I love best, which are mostly mysteries written by women. That have mostly female characters and hopefully queer characters and good writing. 

  Elena Passarello: Okay, I too have summers off, or this summer at least, who is an author who's writing this kind of mystery that you like so much that I can add to my list? 

  Melissa Febos: Oh, sure, sure. There's a book that I tell people, you might not need this, I don't know if you read mysteries, but it's a good icebreaker because it's so killer in literary ways, like you can bounce a quarter off this woman's sentences. But it brings all of the pleasures of a true mystery and that's Flynn Berry's Under the Harrow. It's kind of a slim, totally gripping, beautiful, murdery book, it's great. [Elena: Love a thin book.] You can just gulp it down in a day. 

  Elena Passarello: A book that you can put the pocket of your seersucker jacket. 

  Melissa Febos: That's right. 

  Elena Passarello: You know, or like fold it over and hold it in one hand when you're on the metro. That's right, that's right. 

  Melissa Febos: Use it to swat the rats away. 

  Elena Passarello: So we always end with the same question here on Open Book. We ask our hallowed guests for a controversial book or reading opinion. Melissa Febos, do you have one? 

  Melissa Febos: I have so many that I actually can't. They're crowd, they're bottlenecking in my mind right now. [Elena: Can we have a lightning round.] Can I lightning round? Okay, it's okay to stop reading a book at any point because you're bored. [Elena: Amen.] And never come back to it and never feel guilty. [Elena: Life is short.] Everybody should read some books of the people, like some super popular fun books, like it's humbling and it's pleasurable, so do it. And I don't know that I ever, like I will, but I don't need to ever read another book by a man. You can cut that if it's too controversial. 

  Elena Passarello: No no we like it. 

  Melissa Febos: But I just feel like I spent the early years of my life growing up in the 80s and 90s reading almost entirely men. It's not even like a political position. It's like a physical, like it's just too, I'm just at capacity, you know? And so there are a few who I'm like, I will always buy his book when it comes out. But I, just if there's two men talking for too long, it's like I have an allergic reaction to it. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah, they don't talk about the book equivalent of the Bechdel Test, but maybe the Febos test is how long are men talking in this book before someone else intervenes. 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, I just, it's just my hand just drops it. 

  Elena Passarello: So there are some people that you still might read who are male writers, man writers, who would those be? 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I read plenty of male writers. I just don't feel obligated to, and not with a single cell of my being, so.  

  Elena Passarello: That's an important point, is like is like, even if you say you don't need to read it again, you're probably going to, like, they're always washing up on the shore of our consciousness. 

  Melissa Febos: And there are male writers that I like, I just don't feel I ever owe it to mankind. 

  Elena Passarello: If you have time, you're going to seek out another. 

  Melissa Febos: Yeah, and that, like, obviously excludes trans men and, you know, but the only man who comes to mind right now who's not, like a friend, whose book I will buy and hardcover and just read it, is actually Jonathan Franzen. I think he's... I love reading his work, except for that one bad one. 

  Elena Passarello: What do you love about Franzen's writing? 

  Melissa Febos: It surprises me. It's thoughtful. I just trust him. Like he has a kind of authority, even when he's being a bozo and I'm like enough about the birds, you know? He does love those birds. I just he's gonna like make it interesting for me and that there is some thought behind it. And there are really deep, profound surprises. And most of those surprises arrive in the form of like. The depth of his representation of human consciousness. And that is one of the principal things that I read for in novels, and he almost always delivers it. 

  Elena Passarello: The depth of human consciousness or a deep exploration approach. 

  Melissa Febos: He goes into the labyrinth and depicts it in a recognizable, humane way. More humane the longer he writes. I think his earlier books were less humane, he was sort of meaner to his characters. Yeah, he's still pretty mean, but you can tell he loves them now. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah, I think that makes me think about what we were talking about with beach books, too, because then it's like, well, why don't we only read beach books? Because these literary endeavors sometimes give us a profound surprise, an architected surprise, this like grounded, confident, sort of epic discovery. 

  Melissa Febos: Did you read The Safekeep? [Elena: No.] By Yael van der Wouden? It's so good. I mean, not only because the sex in it is absolutely mind-blowing, it is, but because it has one such surprise. 

  Elena Passarello: Okay, we have to ask one more question, I'm sorry. I think we'd be remiss, Melissa, if we didn't ask you what's some of your favorite sex writing. 

  Melissa Febos: Oh my god, Eileen Myles, Jeanette Winterson. 

  Elena Passarello: Maybe my favorite. I just teleported the guy in Ratatouille back to being 20 years old. 

  Melissa Febos: Oh my god, written on the body, sexing the cherry, the passion. I mean, it's just, she was the first writer where I was like, oh, you can be brainy and esthetically great and just nasty. [Elena: Nasty.] At the same time. And you can write about like a piece of fruit or something totally cliched. And it's, she just, she is a gifted woman. She has had some sex. 

  Elena Passarello: Pretty certain. And she remembers it. 

  Melissa Febos: She remembers it well. 

  Elena Passarello: She may have been taking some notes. 

  Melissa Febos: That's right. 

  Elena Passarello: That's what I should have done. 

  Elena Passarello: Melissa, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, even when there's a microphone in my face. 

  Melissa Febos: Oh my god, the pleasure is all mine. 

  Elena Passarello: That was Melissa Febos on Open Book. You can order her latest book, The Dry Season, over at powells.com. Thanks for listening to Open Book. I'm Elena Passarello, your host. Our executive producer is Laura Hadden and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our mixer. A Walker Spring composed our theme song and Ashley Park is our social media marketer. A big thanks to the entire staff at Live Wire Radio, the fine folks at PRX, and of course, Powell's Books for sponsoring this podcast.