VFA Recommended Books

ALIX KATES SHULMAN'S CLASSIC MEMOIRS OF AN EX PROM QUEEN IS REISSUED!

Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen created a profound impact on the cultural landscape when it was published in 1972. A sardonic portrayal of one white, middle-class, Midwestern girl's coming-of-age, the novel takes a wry and prescient look at a range of experiences treated at the time as taboo but which were ultimately accepted as matters of major political significance: sexual harassment, job discrimination, the sexual double standard, rape, abortion restrictions, the double binds of marriage and motherhood, and the frantic quest for beauty. The book went on to sell more than a million copies and is regarded today as a classic, one of the first and best pieces of fiction born of the women's liberation movement. With many of its concerns still with us today, this witty and devastating novel continues to resonate with readers, and Sasha Davis has proved herself a prom queen for the ages.

"Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen is a vivid reminder of just how much--and sometimes, how little--has changed for women in the last 35 years. Typing prowess and wedding-night virginity may no longer be expected, but Shulman's tale of Sasha Davis's struggle to find herself amid conflicting cultural messages about beauty, brains, and sex will be resonant for many more years to come." -Andi Zeisler, editorial/creative director of Bitch magazine

"Extremely relevant--I loved it! Growing up female in America forces many to become obsessed with how they look and how others see them, yet these cultural pressures and their effect on young woman are too rarely taken seriously and it was valuable and comforting to read a book that recognizes this and puts it in perspective. I only wish I'd found Alix Shulman's classic earlier." -Sophie Pollitt-Cohen, co-author of The Notebook Girls

Alix Kates Shulman is the author of three other novels, including A Good Enough Daughter (1999) and the award-winning memoir Drinking the Rain (1996) , two books on the anarchist Emma Goldman, and three children's books. She divides her time between New York City and Maine.

CONTACT
Audrey Harris
Associate Publicist
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
19 Union Square West - New York, NY 10003
Phone: 212.206.5338 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 212.206.5338 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting - Fax: 212.206.5340 audrey.harris@fsgbooks.com

ALSO BY ALIX

To Love What Is: a marriage transformed

One day it happens, the dreaded thing that will change your life forever, the more dreadful because, though you've half expected it, you don't know what form it will take or when it will come, and whether or not you will rise to the challenge. For Alix it happened on July 22, 2004, at two a.m. on a coastal Maine island in a remote seaside cabin where she woke to find that her beloved husband had fallen nine feet from their sleeping loft and was lying deathly still on the floor below. Though he would survive, he suffered an injury that left him seriously brain impaired.

In this elegant memoir, Shulman describes life on the other side: the ongoing anxieties, risks, and surprising rewards she experiences as she reorganizes her world and her priorities to care for her husband and discovers that what may have seemed a grim life-sentence to some has evolved into something unexpectedly rich.

These Books are Also Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

CONTACT ALIX: akshulman@nyc.rr.com

Website: http://www.alixkshulman.com