Be it about the futility of her days, her tedious neighbors, her dog, commutes to work, museum exhibitions, and a deep dive into the television program The Good Wife. But even when she’s blocked, she’s writing. You begin to feel time in a different fashion due to her periods of utter frustration and keen fascination. The ebb and flow of her days anchors the book. SEE ALSO: Olivia Laing’s Prescient Essay Collection Examines the Role of Art in Times of Crisis If you’re open to a more fluid engagement between writer and reader, what you’ll find is something beyond a writer’s diary. And those who come to it expecting the traditional shape of a novel may not find what they were looking for, either. The plot may bear resemblance to Zambreno’s life, yet don’t be mistaken this is neither memoir, nor autofiction. Centered around a writer living in Brooklyn with her partner and dog, teaching as an adjunct and struggling to complete her manuscript (also tentatively titled Drifts ) this book is utterly invigorating. Her new book Drifts is a novel that reads with the candor and intimacy of a memoir. Readers were drawn in by her distilled passages and imagining of a more inclusive feminist literary canon.

Zambreno had written two novels prior to Heroines, but it was this book that brought her a wider audience. Submerged desires and imagined lives made for a brash and confident mash-up of literary memoir and cultural critique. Writing about Vivienne Eliot, Zelda Fitzgerald, Jane Bowles and Jean Rhys, Zambreno considers her own exile in Ohio, following her partner’s career track. Kate Zambreno’s 2012 book, Heroines, was inspired by her blog, Frances Farmer Is My Sister, which recovered forgotten or underappreciated women writers and artists who were often dismissed as muses or mistresses to greater male masters.

Heroines by Kate Zambreno