Michelle Dean is a journalist, critic and the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle's 2016 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. A contributing editor at the New Republic, she has written for the New Yorker, Nation, New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York Magazine, Elle and BuzzFeed. She lives in New York City.
There can't be enough cultural histories which make the point that
a woman intellectual must represent her own mind, and not the
collective mind of all her 'sisters.' Sharp is a brisk,
entertaining, well-researched reminder that it's impossible to
write - or think - without making life very messy for oneself, but
to do so is an achievement well worth the pains
*Sheila Heti, author of How Should A Person Be?*
I have to recommend Michelle Dean's Sharp: The Women Who Made an
Art of Having an Opinion, a delicious cultural history that comes
out in April. It brings together some of the most influential
social critics of the 20th century, including Dorothy Parker, Mary
McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, and shows
how these glamorous iconoclasts forged their singular careers. Dean
makes the convincing argument that women's voices--if not
necessarily feminist ones--did far more to define the last
century's intellectual life than we realize
*New York Times*
[A] stunning and highly accessible introduction to a group of
important writers
*Publishers Weekly*
Michelle Dean has delivered an exquisite examination - both
rigorous and compassionate - of what it has meant to be a woman
with a public voice and the power to use it critically. This book
is ferociously good
*Rebecca Traister, New York Times-bestselling author of All the
Single Ladies*
This is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it
off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary
subjects, in print and out in the world. Dean writes with vigor,
depth, knowledge and absorption, and as a result Sharp is a real
achievement
*Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion*
This is a great and worthy project: a primer for those for whom
these names are new; a sustaining reminder for those already
familiar with them. You put it down feeling steadier, more
determined
*Observer*
Michelle Dean's Sharp, a portrait of 10 female writers and
thinkers, is a bracing tribute to the life of the iconoclastic
mind: a reminder, in our age of flashy hot takes, of the matchless
power of sustained and elegant argument
*Guardian*
A fascinating analysis of brilliant female writers. By the end
you'll want to read something by all of them
*Evening Standard*
These crisp mini-portraits of some of 20th-century America's most
brilliant women writers - like Joan Didion, Dorothy Parker and Nora
Ephron - are so inspiring
*Carina Axelsson*
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