What do Sylvia Plath, Mae West, Taylor Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Helen Keller, Sally Ride, Toni Morrison, Dolores Huerta, Lizzie Borden, Billie Jean King, and Eleanor of Aquitaine have in common? They're all stars in 2024's FAST FAMOUS WOMEN: 75 Essays of Flash NonFiction, the latest volume in Gina Barreca's FAST WOMEN series. As in previous titles, brilliant well-known writers and columnists with established voices are joined by a chorus of emerging writers from diverse backgrounds, some of whom had never before seen their work in a book with with an ISBN. New works by Jane Smiley, Caroline Leavitt, Mimi Pond, Molly Peacock, Phillis Levin, Darien Hsu Gee, Cheryl Della Pietra, and Ebony Root offer provocative and deeply personal reflections on the women in the public eye who shaped their own visions of a woman's life, talents, role, and possibilities. FAST FAMOUS WOMEN is, in effect, the most glamorous of great dinner parties, welcoming all readers to the world of women's lives lived in public view. Some guests whoop it up over champagne and oysters while others weep in corners; a few dance on the veranda and while others set out plates or, hands on hips, face the mess. Fast Famous Women is a literary event you won't want to miss.

Praise for Fast Funny Women, last year's breakout in the Fast Women Series, edited by Gina Barreca

If you're a woman and you like humor in your life--plus intelligence--get this book.

--Nancy Thayer, author of Family Reunion

Every man should read this book.

--Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing

The 2nd book in the FAST WOMEN SERIES, with fierce new works from writers you know by heart--NYT bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt, NPR's own Maureen Corrigan, award-winning poet Phillis Levin, stand-up comic Leighann Lord, Founder and Director of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Teri Rizvi, playwright Beth Blatt, screenwriter Pamela Katz, activist and author Leslie Morgan Steiner, Rabbi Marisa Elana James, Pastor Jamie Spriggs, activist and teacher Ebony Murphy-Root--alongside other familiar and emerging authors whose original pieces were commissioned.

Winner, 2021 Foreword INDIES award

Every man should read this book. --Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing

75 women writers, ages 20 to 89, were invited by editor Gina Barreca to make a party out of their life's most unnerving, challenging, illuminating, desperate, and hilarious moments. You know many of these brilliant women, but you've never heard them like this! With new works commissioned for the book from:

• Marge Piercy, NYT Bestseller and member of the American Academy of Poets
• Jane Smiley, Pulitzer-Prize winner
• Mimi Pond, NYT bestseller graphic artist
• Liza Donnelly, New Yorker staff cartoonist
• Fay Weldon, Commander of the British Empire
• Ilene Beckerman, bestselling author of Love, Loss, and What I Wore
• Nicole Hollander, Sylvia creator
• Lisa Landry and Leighann Lord, stand-up comics

And many more! Political campaigners, devoted teachers, lousy daughters, good mothers, would-be nuns, admired sportswriters, grad-school-wanna-bes, revenge-driven sisters, frustrated roommates, body-fluid-sorting professionals, lace-loving fashion mavens, intrepid daters, hungry lovers, justice-seeking nasty-women, ACE wedding celebrants, trapped wives, and women with all kinds of ammunition tell their stories--and their stories are all under 750 words.

Memoir. Confession. Humor.Lived-experience. Intimate Revelations. Professional Discoveries.Survival. Pleasure. Triumph. Fast Fallen Women introduces 75 new essays about the dangerous and enthralling ways women fall--and how we get back on our feet, more deft, more decisive, and daring than ever. Holding a compact mirror up to life with the same curiosity that enveloped Eve when she once held the apple, editor Gina Barreca's latest inclusive collection of short, sharp, feminist pieces illuminate women's courage, curiosity, and wit. With new and original works by: - Amy Tan - Jane Smiley - Caroline Leavitt - Bobbie Ann Mason - Honor Moore - Darien Hsu Gee - Ilene Beckerman - and Lynn Peril --alongside other ground-breaking journalists, novelists, and writers, you'll find emerging authors whose creative non-fiction is appearing on the page for the first time--you will find within these pages a celebration the fallen woman the long overdue. Fast Fallen Women gives whispered conversation a full voice.

In a world where eye cream is made from placenta, Gina Barreca is the lone voice calling out But wait, whose placenta is it? In this collection of deliciously quotable essays, Gina asks the big questions: Why is there no King Charming? Why does no bra ever fit? Why do people say cougar like it's a bad thing? Why do we call it a glass ceiling when it's just a thick layer of men? Barreca packs a hilarious punch while gleefully rejecting emotional torture, embracing limitless laughter, and showing women how they can conquer the world with good friends (It's not that diamonds are a girl's best friend, but a girl's best friends are diamonds), sharp wit, great shoes, and not a single worry about VPLs.

Gina School is for emotionally lost college students; jaded professors tired of giving ignored advice; self-actualizing women who enjoy laughing; self-actualizing men who aren't intimidated by the woman laughing beside them holding a copy of Gina School nervous people waiting in Dentist offices looking for a distraction; fans of Erma Bombeck; fans of Edward Gorey; inquisitive bus riders and MTA ticket holders who can read without experiencing motion sickness or who have Dramamine on-hand; students of life, humor, and love; aspiring students of life, humor, and love who don't practice much beyond hanging Pottery Barn's Live, Laugh, Love sign above their fireplace (an essential reminder without which they irrationally fear blindly pursuing a path of Death, Tears, and Hatred); lovesick self-saboteurs seeking clarity; people trapped in love triangles; people stuck in regular triangles, such as A-Frame houses after earthquakes or confusing pyramidal playground equipment, who would appreciate some light reading while the Fire Department comes; young people baffled by old people; old people baffled by young people; and, quite simply, anyone with an empathetic funny bone.