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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Memoirs

SHRILL

Lindy West

Notes from a Loud Woman

SHRILL is a comic polemic memoir, interwoven chapters about what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living speaking for the silenced in all caps. Lindy narrates her life in a world where not all stories are created equal, not everybody's bodies are treated with equal respect--where jokes can be weaponized to hurt or deployed to spread what she has come to call "radical empathy."

Hailed by Lena Dunham as an "essential (and hilarious) voice for women," Lindy West is ferociously witty and outspoken, tackling topics as varied as pop culture, social justice and body image. Her empowering work has garnered a coast-to-coast audience that eagerly awaits SHRILL, her highly-anticipated literary debut. West has rocked readers in work published everywhere from The Guardian to GQ to This American Life. She is a catalyst for a national conversation in a world where not all stories are created equal and not every body is treated with equal respect. SHRILL is comprised of a series of essays that bravely shares her life, including her transition from quiet to feminist-out-loud, coming of age in a popular culture that is hostile to women (especially fat, funny women) and how keeping quiet is not an option for any of us. Lindy West is a Seattle-based writer, editor, and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice, humor, and body image. She's currently a culture writer for GQ magazine and GQ.com and a weekly columnist at The Guardian, as well as the founder and editor of I Believe You | It's Not Your Fault, an advice blog for teens. In 2015 she wrote and recorded a story for This American Life about confronting an Internet troll who impersonated her dead father. She also was listed as "Internet's Most Fascinating of 2015" by Cosmopolitan.com, and helped launch the viral #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag in defense of women's reproductive rights.

Available products
Book Published 2016-05-17 by Hachette

Comments

Link to the tv series trailer for SHRILL Read more...

Lindy West is an essential (and hilarious) voice for women. Her talent and bravery have made the Internet a place I actually want to be. Thank you, Lindy.

Winner of the Stranger Genius Award

Elizabeth Banks’ Brownstone Prods. Makes Mark on TV, Developing With ABC, CW, CBS and NBC (EXCLUSIVE) Read more...

It made me hurt, both from laughing and crying. Required reading if you are a feminist. Recommended reading if you aren't.

There's some beautiful, joyful writing here: West defies cliches both by being persistently hilarious and deeply loving.....In the same way that West traces the sobering long-term consequences of fighting over big cultural issues in public, she also writes with substance and grace about living in her own body in a way that transcends the sometimes facile cheerleading for body positivity that shows up everywhere, from feminist Tumblrs to the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue.....It's not easy to talk about the work and consequences involved in changing the world; we crave triumphal stories and incidents to get outraged by. The strength of "Shrill," though, is the way it captures both halves of the equation, the joy of those hard-fought victories and the pain incurred in battle.

Hey reader! I thought I'd read enough in this lifetime about people's childhoods and feelings and such and I'd never want to do it again. But Lindy West is such a totally entertaining and original writer she kind of blew that thought out of my head halfway into the first chapter. I dare you to feel differently.

SHRILL appeared on the New York Times bestseller list at #4 on the Humor list for the week of June 5, 2016:

From her early stories to the hot-off-the-press pages of Shrill, there is one ever-present, never exhausted hallmark of West's writing, and that is its unwavering heart. Whether she's writing about being fat-shamed by a stranger or confronting the troll who posed online as her recently deceased father, West has a way of wringing empathy and catharsis out of even the most deplorable circumstances. Reading her book is like taking a master class in inclusivity and cultural criticism, as taught by one of the funniest feminists alive today.

Lindy West's memoir is a witty and cathartic take on toxic misogyny and fat shaming. She comes to accept her body just as Internet trolls congregate en masse to try to rip this new confidence from her, but she's rearing to fight back: " 'Whale' is the weakest insult ever, by the way. Oh, I have a giant brain and rule the sea with my majesty? What have you accomplished lately, Steve?" In Shrill, West is our fat, ferocious and funny avenging angel.

Lindy West is funny. That's the first thing you should know about her essay collection on feminism, fat acceptance, and Internet harassment. Shrill is as hilarious as it is angry. Lindy has faced so many intolerable and enraging situations as a fat woman who is outspoken in her writing and on social media, but she always frames her negative experiences with humor and perspective. With her clear-eyed insights into modern culture and her confidence in her own intelligence and personal worth, West appeals to the humanity of even the most parents' basement-dwelling, misogynistic and casually hateful of trolls.

There's a reason Lindy West is such a beloved writer: she gets to the heart of impossible issues with humor and grace. West will have you cringing, laughing and crying, all within one page. Shrill is a must-read for all women.

The 10 most important books of 2016 Read more...

One of the most distinctive voices advancing feminist politics through humor...With patience, humor and a wildly generous attitude toward her audience [West] meets readers at their point of prejudice so that she may, with little visible effort, shepherd them toward a more humane point of view.

UK: Quercus Books ; Korea: Sejong; Japan: Futaba-Sha

The surge of love and joy I felt while crylaughing through this book almost made my cold dead heart explode. Lindy is so smart and so funny that it almost hurts my little jealous-ass feelings. She is my most favorite writer ever.

West, a GQ culture writer and former staff writer for Jezebel, balances humor with a rare honesty and introspection in her debut.

One of the most impressive aspects of this book is the level of nuance, self-reflection, and humanity that West displays in her analysis of her own writing and her relationships with others.... She shows that you can be funny and mean and incisive and brilliant, and you can also be thoughtful and considerate and write with intention....Throughout, West proves herself to be a considerate and critical narrator with equal capacity for humor and genuine reflection-a writer who can turn her analytical eye just as easily to society as to her own life. It's the best kind of memoir, and it shows that Lindy West still has a lot more to say-and that we should all keep listening.

In this uproariously funny debut, West, GQ writer and fat-acceptance activist, blends memoir, social commentary, and ribald comedy in a biting fat and feminist manifesto….Readers will delight in West’s biting clarity as she describes her childhood (there are no positive depictions of fat people in Disney) and beliefs (why it’s so offensive to ask fat people “where they get their confidence”), illuminating the insidious way our culture regards those who are overweight as subhuman and revolting moral and intellectual failures….

Ask West one question, and the feminist writer and film critic's answer feels like wandering into an extraordinarily engaging women's studies class taught by your favorite comedian. West pings back and forth between astute commentary about the role of women in society to clever asides on the idiocy of trolls to riotous observations about life on the Internet.

It's literally the new Bible.

With the title of her first book, Lindy West stares defiantly into the eyes of anyone who reaches to pick it up and dares them not to shed any sexism they might harbor, whether conscious or not and whether it’s in big ideas or small words—like the “egregious double standard” of the gendered word “shrill.” Her writing is sharp, smart, hilarious, relatable, insightful and memorable. She tackles serious and personal subjects—like being fat, getting an abortion, feeling lonely or dealing with harassment online—and is just as capable of eliciting tears as laughter. The combination is part of what makes her voice so effective and absorbing. The book “is largely about my journey from quiet to loud and figuring out how to be loud and big in all of these different areas,” she told Newsweek the week her book came out in May. And just because it’s a memoir written by a woman doesn’t mean “it’s this froufrou, whiny, niche, shrill thing,” she said. Women won’t likely need encouragement for this one, so men, take note. Lindy and I dare you to pick up a copy.

SHRILL tv series: in March 2019 the series SHRILL aired on Hulu. The half-hour, single-camera coming-of-feminist-age comedy, was optioned by Elizabeth Banks' Brownstone Productions, was purchased by Warner Bros. Productions with SNL's Aidy Bryant starring as Lindy, a young writer finding her voice at a quirky, diverse independent weekly in Seattle.

Lindy West can take almost any topic and write about it in a way that is smart, funny, warm, and unique.