In her first book, Shrill, Lindy West offers this memorable take on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland: ‘She is the perfect feminazi caricature: fat, loud, irrational, violent, overbearing, constantly hitting a hedgehog with a flamingo. Oh, shit. She taught me everything I know.’
A raucous, unflinching and hilarious feminist voice, Lindy West is best known for her writing in Jezebel and the Guardian – especially on body image and sexual violence. Seattle-based, West is also known for an unforgettable episode of the This American Life podcast in which she confronted, and received a sincere apology, from a man who had cruelly trolled her online in the guise of her deceased father.
Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman is a collection of first-person essays traversing the themes of fat-shaming, Twitter-trolling, racism, sexism and more. 'Women are told, from birth, that it's our job to be small: physically small, small in our presence, and small in our impact on the world,’ she writes. ‘... I want to obliterate that expectation.'
In conversation with Anne Summers.
This event will be Auslan interpreted.
Featuring
Lindy West
Lindy West is a Seattle-based writer and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, feminism, social justice, humour and body image. Currently a weekly columnist at the Guardian and culture writer for GQ magazine, she was previously one of the most popular and prolific writers at feminist blog Jezebel.
In 2013, she won a Social Media Award from NYC's Women's Media Center, was selected for the Nation's top ten feminist articles of the year and New Statesman's top 20 best online pieces of the year, and was profiled by Cosmopolitan magazine.