A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again

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Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by the New York Times, The Week, Vulture, Elle, and The Millions A piercing blend of memoir, criticism, and biography examining how women writers across the centuries carved out intellectual freedom for themselves-and how others might do the same I took off my wedding ring for the last time-a gold band with half a line of "Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath etched inside-and for weeks afterwards, my thumb would involuntarily reach across my palm for the warm bright circle that had gone. I didn't fling the ring into the long grass, like women do in the movies, but a feeling began bubbling up nevertheless, from my stomach to my throat: it could fling my arms out. I was free. . . . A few years into her marriage and feeling societal pressure to surrender to domesticity, Joanna Biggs found herself longing for a different kind of existence. Was this all there was? She divorced without knowing what would come next. Newly untethered, Joanna returned to the free-spirited writers of ...