* ABA National Besteller *
Available for Purchase
“Editors Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters offer a thought-provoking collection that deserves to be talked about by readers. Recommended for discussion groups. ”
“Haunting, poignant, vicious, meditative and hopeful, all at once.”
“A stunning collection that will change your life.... No anthology has moved, thrilled, and expanded me as much as this one, delivering essay after essay that shifts desire’s ground from under its readers feet.”
“Captivating rawness and sincerity... A striking and powerful compendium on the multifaceted nature of longing.”
What is desire? And what are its rules? In Wanting: Women Writing About Desire, edited by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters, award-winning and emerging female writers share their innermost longings, in turn dismantling both personal and political constructs of what desire is or can be.
In the opening essay, Larissa Pham unearths the ache beneath all her wants: time. Rena Priest’s desire for a pair of five-hundred-dollar cowboy boots spurs a reckoning with her childhood on the rez and the fraught history of her hometown. Other pieces in the collection turn cultural tropes around dating, sex, and romance on their heads—Angela Cardinale tries dating as a divorced mother of two in the California suburbs only to discover sweet solace in being alone; Keyanah B. Nurse finds power in polyamory; and when Joanna Rakoff spots a former lover at a bar, the heat between them unravels her family as she is pulled into his orbit—an undoing, she decides, that’s worth everything.
Featuring essays by Elisa Albert, Kristen Arnett, Molly McCully Brown, Angela Cardinale, Tara Conklin, Sonia Maria David, Jennifer De Leon, Camille T. Dungy, Melissa Febos, Amber Flame, Amy Gall, Aracelis Girmay, Sonora Jha, Nicole Hardy, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, TaraShea Nesbit, Keyanah B. Nurse, Torrey Peters, Amanda Petrusich, Larissa Pham, Rena Priest, Joanna Rakoff, Karen Russell, Domenica Ruta, Susan Shapiro, Terese Svoboda, Lisa Taddeo, Ann Tashi Slater, Abigail Thomas, Merritt Tierce, Michelle Wildgen, Jane Wong, and Teresa Wong.
Press inquiries and galley requests, please contact: Selihah White, Publicist, at selihah.white AT catapult dot co
Press
Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters, WANTING: Women Writing About Desire, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books Podcast, February 2023
Cowboy boots, careers, sex... What do women want?, NPR’s All Things Considered, February 2023
15 February reads you can't help but fall in love with, Good Morning America, February 2023
Wanting: Women Writing About Desire, Publishers Weekly, February 2023
Chorus of Desire: A Conversation with Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters, Literary Mama, January 2023
Review: Wanting: Women Writing About Desire, Shelf Awareness, November 2022
Wanting: Women Writing About Desire, Kirkus, November 2022