*Photograph of Melissa Febos by Beowulf Sheehan*

Fans of memoirist Melissa Febos know that she writes with honesty, vulnerability, and open-mindedness. To read Febos’s work is to venture into the depths of one writer’s most tumultuous emotions, darkest thoughts, and deepest insecurities – with the kind of self-awareness that is both enviable and utterly compelling to read.

In her 2010 debut memoir, Whip Smart, Febos detailed the four years she spent working as a dominatrix, all while struggling with a drug addiction. Since then, she has released 2017’s Abandon Me and 2021’s Girlhood, both of which continue to explore themes such as love and sexuality, addiction, personal identity, and womanhood. And now, Febos has continued the journey of discovering new layers of herself through writing with the release of The Dry Season.

The Dry Season chronicles Febos’s year of celibacy, during which she found joy in being single, discovered new facets of herself, and found immense pleasure outside of love. She made the decision in the wake of a calamitous two-year relationship, which she refers to as The Maelstrom. The aftermath of this relationship forces Febos to face something that she has always known about herself but refused to fully face: she had never really known what it was like to be alone, having been in some sort of relationship since her teens. She had always brushed it off, deemed herself a “relationship person,” and figured it was no big deal – but what if it was? In The Dry Season, Febos discovers just how important being alone is – and lets readers come along for the ride.

Below is our conversation about being vulnerable on the page, observing one’s past self, and releasing personal stories into the world.

Nikki: You describe your time being celibate as one of the most important times of your life and, while it came to be one of the happiest, it’s also full of struggles and a lot of working on yourself – in other words, being very vulnerable. How did you come to the decision that you wanted to share this story with the world, in the form of this book?

Melissa: Well, I didn’t plan on it. During that year, I was just living the experience. Then, five years later, I was finishing my third book, Girlhood, and realized that the experience fit within the purview of that book, so I started an essay about it. Immediately, I knew it wouldn’t fit — those early pages came racing out of me, and I knew I had more to say. So, I set it aside and didn’t come back for a few more years. When I did return to it again, that urgency remained, and I suspected that it was a book, but I worried that it wouldn’t be interesting enough, because I had been so happy that year — I’d never written about happiness to that extent. But as I kept writing, I soon understood that in order to write about that year, I had to write about everything that had preceded it, and there was plenty of conflict to go around.

There were parts of the book that felt vulnerable, and which I hesitated before including, but I have the great benefit of a lot of experience putting vulnerable work into the world and the manner in which that act connects me to a vast network of people who have shared experiences. It has always been worth it, and I trusted that it would be so this time as well.

Nikki: I love the vulnerability in each of your books. In The Dry Season, you confront your bad habits within relationships – for example, at one point, you come to the realization that you may have been “a user” in how you treated your partners. What is it like, during the writing process, to explore these sensitive parts about yourself, knowing that so many people will read it?

Melissa: Well, I write in total privacy. I get to be alone with the book for literal years before anyone else reads it. When a reader encounters a book, it’s new, and gives the illusion of the writer sharing those experiences for the first time. But I had years to make friends with that material, to integrate it, to work through and set down my shame. By the time I publish a book, I’m usually excited to share it, and pretty free of whatever inhibitions I carried into the process of writing it. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about writing personal nonfiction is that it inevitably changes my relationship to my own experiences.

Nikki: A pivotal moment of the book is when you spot an attractive stranger on a plane, only to end up in close proximity to this woman even after landing and deplaning (without giving too much away). The encounter really tests your strength in denying your old ways, which would be to pursue the woman. I loved the way this scene was written – it almost felt like a scene from a novel, the way that you wove in tension and high stakes. What was it like reliving this moment years later during the writing process?

Melissa: I’m so glad you enjoyed that part! I mostly read novels, and that absorbing scene-based experience of self-forgetting is my favorite part of reading, so I try to offer it to my readers. You know, I hadn’t thought much about that experience after I lived it, and only when I returned to it, and performed a kind of autopsy on it did I realize what a pivotal moment it was. This is also one of the gifts of writing about experience: it reveals to me the nature of my own story, the contours that I don’t necessarily see until I try to recreate that story on the page.

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Revisiting revealing moments like that one produces this intense emotional response in me: I am both mortified and utterly compelled to sift through the sensory details and observe my past self to an extent I never could have in the moment. Even though I “remembered” the experience, I had never scrutinized it, never realized the stakes of my choices in those moments. I think it would be much harder to change if I didn’t have such a reliable lab for dissecting my own behavior.

Nikki: You’re now married, having met your wife shortly after deciding to end your celibacy. How does it feel to look back at this celibate period – a time where you learned to love living alone and being on your own – now that you share your life with someone else?

Melissa: Oh, it was just the beginning, ha! Every memoirist knows that by the time you finish writing the memoir, you’re already one foot into the next story. I’m grateful every day that I took that time to reorganize my relationship to love. I could never be married, if I hadn’t. I would not have the necessary tools to navigate long-term partnership and cohabitation. It’s still quite hard sometimes! But I love my wife and my life and I have that year to thank.

Nikki: Throughout your celibacy journey you learned about figures who connected to your story – such as Hildegard and the beguines. How do these figures connect to your life now, post-celibacy?

Melissa: They are a kind of family to me. That year, I discovered that I was part of a lineage I hadn’t even known existed. I will keep them all with me for life.

It’s been incredibly helpful, lately especially, to have the touchstone of so many role models who persisted in their work—to liberate themselves and others, to make art, to live according to their deepest held beliefs—despite the oppressive social forces that sought to stop them and to silence them.

Nikki: At one point, you address the fact that a “radical personal decision” may pale in comparison to “real” radical decisions – I love that you put what many would call a “small” decision on a large scale because for one person, and in this case for you, this is the largest scale. Did the idea that people may not view your celibacy as “big enough” make you question whether or not you should write this book?

Melissa: Oh, sure! I knew that some folks would absolutely scoff at one year of voluntary celibacy. I also knew how much I had in common with folks who were involuntarily celibate, or celibate for longer periods than I was. The book really isn’t about celibacy at all. It’s a book about having a fraught relationship to aloneness, and about living at an extreme. It’s a book for all people who have extremist tendencies. A book for everyone who wants to enlarge their capacity and definition of love, or who want to fall in love with solitude. I know that there will be plenty of people who see the book’s summary and won’t read it because they think they won’t relate, but I feel confident that the ones who do will be happily surprised.

Nikki: You open about the fact that you got into your first relationship as a teen and then stayed in relationships until you were in your 30s – this is a huge part of the reason that you decide to take this celibate time. Were there any other moments in your life where you considered taking a break from sex and dating?

Melissa: I thought about it many, many times. And it was suggested to me many times! But, for better and for worse (mostly for worse), I don’t change until I have to. Which is to say, until I am in quite a lot of pain. So, that is what it took.

Nikki: How is this book in conversation with your previous memoirs?

This book uses all the modes of my previous books, in that it has personal narrative, research, and describes a process of profound transformation, but I also think it’s distinct in that it has more of a sense of humor. I laughed a lot while writing it, and I hope readers do, too. I also felt more at ease with the discursive nature of my own inquiry in this book. It is my most direct book, and the voice of it is closest to my own.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.