Lindy West is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the author of the bestselling memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman (2016), as well as the upcoming essay collection The Witches Are Coming (2019). In 2018, she adapted Shrill as a half-hour comedy for Hulu, which has received glowing reviews.
West is known for her bold, funny, and often deeply personal writing that aims to cancel shame from the daily dialogue of women, especially fat women.
Born and raised in Seattle, West went from writing snarky, sharp pieces in The Stranger to publishing her work in Jezebel, The Guardian, GQ, and Cosmopolitan. Her time at The Stranger is best known for her body positive essay “Hello, I am Fat” and her film review of Sex and the City 2, which went viral in 2010. Now, West is moving away from the searing satire of her 20s. In an interview with The Cut, West explains her “work, and her thinking, have gotten more sophisticated over the years.”
West writes side-by-side with Samantha Irby and Aidy Bryant, of SNL fame, on Shrill. “We’re going to make the show that we needed when we were younger,” West said of the series, which will release its second season in 2020. Shrill, according to Slate, has “more radical things to say about what it’s like to be fat in America” than any of the current shows on television.
West, who sat down with a particularly nasty Internet troll on a memorable episode of This American Life, left the Twiter-sphere to eliminate harassment and negativity from her life. She is the founder of I Believe You, It’s Not Your Fault, an advice blog for teens, as well as the co-founder of the reproductive rights destigmatization campaign #ShoutYourAbortion.
Angela Garbes, who will be moderating the Q&A portion of our event with West, is journalist and the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, which was named an NPR Best Book of 2018. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine‘s The Cut, and featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. She is a former staff writer at Seattle newsweekly The Stranger and lives with her family on Beacon Hill.
