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The Dry Season

A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex

Author Melissa Febos On Tour
Ebook (EPUB)
Knopf
On sale Jun 03, 2025 | 288 Pages | 9780593537244
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From Melissa Febos, the national bestselling author of Girlhood, comes an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes she discovered during a year of celibacy and a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge.

“Only Melissa Febos could convince us of the ecstasy of abstinence. She never fails in her candor and precision.”—Katherine May, author of Wintering

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster. Over those first few months, she gleaned insights into her past and awoke to the joys of being single. She decided to extend her celibacy, not knowing it would become the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life. No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, she learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the distinct pleasures unmediated by lovers, and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt. Bringing her own experiences into conversation with those of women throughout history—from eleventh-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, Virginia Woolf, and Octavia Butler to the Shakers and Sappho—Febos situates her story within a newfound lineage of role models who unapologetically pursued their ambitions and ideals.

By abstaining from all forms of romantic entanglement, Febos began to see her life and her self-worth in a radical, new way. Her year of divestment transformed her relationships with friends and peers, her spirituality, her creative practice, and, most of all, her relationship to herself. Blending intimate personal narrative and incisive cultural criticism, The Dry Season tells a story that’s as much about celibacy as its inverse: pleasure, desire, fulfillment. Infused with fearless honesty and keen intellect, it’s the memoir of a woman learning to live at the center of her own story, and a much-needed catalyst for a new conversation around sex and love.
“Melissa Febos is a writer of singular wisdom and compassion, and The Dry Season is an utterly consuming and deeply generous book—an illuminating exploration of solitude and partnership, intimacy and manipulation, the stories we tell ourselves about the choices we make and how we might unlearn those stories to see ourselves more clearly. Reading this book, I felt an ecstatic, nerve-tingling gratitude, like it was written just for me—finding such crisp, incisive language for emotional knots I’ve felt caught inside for years—but part of the joy of this feeling was knowing how many people will feel the same way: that this book was written just for them.”
—Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

“The Dry Season is brilliant and powerful meditation upon addiction, desire, seduction, and the undervalued (and all-too-unexplored) power of a woman laying claim to a period of celibacy for spiritual and personal reasons. Febos is both unflinching and compassionate as she inventories all that she has done for love, and what she will never do again. A deeply important book, and I saw myself and many women whom I love and admire on every page.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“Melissa Febos’s The Dry Season will be called a book about abstinence, about celibacy, but it’s so much more than that. This is a book about obsession, compulsion, about self and self-lessness, about sex and love and art and faith and the capacity of each to swallow us whole, to obliterate us, make us anew alit with our history instead of engulfed by it. Febos talks back to time as she unravels it, inviting everyone into the conversation from Hadewijch to Hildegard, Foucault to Lorde, St. Augustine to Annie Dillard. The Dry Season is about reenchanting oneself with the world. It’s the best book yet by one of contemporary non-fiction’s lodestars.”
— Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

“Only Melissa Febos could write a memoir of her sexual abstinence and make it like a game of Clue. How to catch a thief when the thief is yourself? And the thief of yourself, too? A profound, distilled, untying of a complex knot—Febos riddles out the ways we might subjugate ourselves even with the ways we imagine we are liberated.”
—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Reading The Dry Season is like having a nourishing conversation with a smart, wry, and ever-probing friend—a conversation so full of wisdom and pleasure that you don’t want it to end. But the book is more than that. Under its nominal topic and entertaining inventory lies a commitment to the lifelong project of “how to get free”—which, as Febos makes clear, is distinct from the more familiar one of “whose fault it was.” The example of Febos’s commitment throughout these pages is inspiring and rare; we’re lucky and better off for it.”
—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“Deftly illuminates how and why one’s sense of self is subject to change, mutilate, or surrender when in relation to another and asks what happens when that stops. The result is profound—Febos embraces the ability to be alone and in love with oneself. The Dry Season is essential reading.”
—A.M. Homes, author of The Unfolding

“Only Melissa Febos could convince us of the ecstasy of abstinence. She never fails in her candor and precision.”
—Katherine May, author of Wintering

“In The Dry Season, Melissa Febos draws us into the depths of obsession and desire, delivering an unflinching yet generous reflection on the formative moments that shape our relationships. This is no ordinary excavation; it’s a director’s cut of our darkest impulses, a mirror held up to our psyche, revealing the universal threads of longing and weakness that bind us together. . . . This is a dictionary of vulnerability. . . . With precision and grace, Febos illuminates how our failures, our heartbreaks, and our obsessions hold the potential for transformation. She invites us to uncover the meaning behind it all—how sex, desire, and history converge to shape who we are and who we might yet become. The Dry Season is a testament to the power of self-awareness, a way forward for those brave enough to look back.”
—Samra Habib, author of We Have Always Been Here

“This story is about understanding, reclaiming, and celebrating pleasure, rendered sublimely and with wit. A gorgeous and thought-provoking memoir about how celibacy can teach us about love.”
—Kirkus Reviews [starred]
© Beowulf Sheehan
MELISSA FEBOS is the nationally bestselling author of four books, including Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Library, the Black Mountain Institute, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Sewanee Review, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly. View titles by Melissa Febos

About

From Melissa Febos, the national bestselling author of Girlhood, comes an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes she discovered during a year of celibacy and a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge.

“Only Melissa Febos could convince us of the ecstasy of abstinence. She never fails in her candor and precision.”—Katherine May, author of Wintering

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster. Over those first few months, she gleaned insights into her past and awoke to the joys of being single. She decided to extend her celibacy, not knowing it would become the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life. No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, she learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the distinct pleasures unmediated by lovers, and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt. Bringing her own experiences into conversation with those of women throughout history—from eleventh-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, Virginia Woolf, and Octavia Butler to the Shakers and Sappho—Febos situates her story within a newfound lineage of role models who unapologetically pursued their ambitions and ideals.

By abstaining from all forms of romantic entanglement, Febos began to see her life and her self-worth in a radical, new way. Her year of divestment transformed her relationships with friends and peers, her spirituality, her creative practice, and, most of all, her relationship to herself. Blending intimate personal narrative and incisive cultural criticism, The Dry Season tells a story that’s as much about celibacy as its inverse: pleasure, desire, fulfillment. Infused with fearless honesty and keen intellect, it’s the memoir of a woman learning to live at the center of her own story, and a much-needed catalyst for a new conversation around sex and love.

Reviews

“Melissa Febos is a writer of singular wisdom and compassion, and The Dry Season is an utterly consuming and deeply generous book—an illuminating exploration of solitude and partnership, intimacy and manipulation, the stories we tell ourselves about the choices we make and how we might unlearn those stories to see ourselves more clearly. Reading this book, I felt an ecstatic, nerve-tingling gratitude, like it was written just for me—finding such crisp, incisive language for emotional knots I’ve felt caught inside for years—but part of the joy of this feeling was knowing how many people will feel the same way: that this book was written just for them.”
—Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

“The Dry Season is brilliant and powerful meditation upon addiction, desire, seduction, and the undervalued (and all-too-unexplored) power of a woman laying claim to a period of celibacy for spiritual and personal reasons. Febos is both unflinching and compassionate as she inventories all that she has done for love, and what she will never do again. A deeply important book, and I saw myself and many women whom I love and admire on every page.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“Melissa Febos’s The Dry Season will be called a book about abstinence, about celibacy, but it’s so much more than that. This is a book about obsession, compulsion, about self and self-lessness, about sex and love and art and faith and the capacity of each to swallow us whole, to obliterate us, make us anew alit with our history instead of engulfed by it. Febos talks back to time as she unravels it, inviting everyone into the conversation from Hadewijch to Hildegard, Foucault to Lorde, St. Augustine to Annie Dillard. The Dry Season is about reenchanting oneself with the world. It’s the best book yet by one of contemporary non-fiction’s lodestars.”
— Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

“Only Melissa Febos could write a memoir of her sexual abstinence and make it like a game of Clue. How to catch a thief when the thief is yourself? And the thief of yourself, too? A profound, distilled, untying of a complex knot—Febos riddles out the ways we might subjugate ourselves even with the ways we imagine we are liberated.”
—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Reading The Dry Season is like having a nourishing conversation with a smart, wry, and ever-probing friend—a conversation so full of wisdom and pleasure that you don’t want it to end. But the book is more than that. Under its nominal topic and entertaining inventory lies a commitment to the lifelong project of “how to get free”—which, as Febos makes clear, is distinct from the more familiar one of “whose fault it was.” The example of Febos’s commitment throughout these pages is inspiring and rare; we’re lucky and better off for it.”
—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“Deftly illuminates how and why one’s sense of self is subject to change, mutilate, or surrender when in relation to another and asks what happens when that stops. The result is profound—Febos embraces the ability to be alone and in love with oneself. The Dry Season is essential reading.”
—A.M. Homes, author of The Unfolding

“Only Melissa Febos could convince us of the ecstasy of abstinence. She never fails in her candor and precision.”
—Katherine May, author of Wintering

“In The Dry Season, Melissa Febos draws us into the depths of obsession and desire, delivering an unflinching yet generous reflection on the formative moments that shape our relationships. This is no ordinary excavation; it’s a director’s cut of our darkest impulses, a mirror held up to our psyche, revealing the universal threads of longing and weakness that bind us together. . . . This is a dictionary of vulnerability. . . . With precision and grace, Febos illuminates how our failures, our heartbreaks, and our obsessions hold the potential for transformation. She invites us to uncover the meaning behind it all—how sex, desire, and history converge to shape who we are and who we might yet become. The Dry Season is a testament to the power of self-awareness, a way forward for those brave enough to look back.”
—Samra Habib, author of We Have Always Been Here

“This story is about understanding, reclaiming, and celebrating pleasure, rendered sublimely and with wit. A gorgeous and thought-provoking memoir about how celibacy can teach us about love.”
—Kirkus Reviews [starred]

Author

© Beowulf Sheehan
MELISSA FEBOS is the nationally bestselling author of four books, including Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Library, the Black Mountain Institute, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Sewanee Review, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly. View titles by Melissa Febos

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