BABES + BOOKS

To kick off 2018, we're excited to launch babes + books, the official (and long-awaited) book club of Babes Who Hustle.

Coordinated and led by author and freelance journalist Hurley Winkler, the book club will take place in cozy coffee shops + venues in various cities on a quarterly basis, and include a laid-back, round table discussion. Added bonus? New friendships and networking opportunities!

The works we've chosen have all been created by female writers, center on female protagonists, and include storylines with women-focused themes and issues. Learn more about the works below, then click here for details and membership sign-up. 

We are currently seeking book club ambassadors. Ambassadors will be responsible for coordinating book club venue locations, communicating with members in your area, and leading discussions. Interested in being a book club ambassador in your city? Send us an email.

Sign up as a book club member here.

 
 

Featured works:

 

HUNGER | ROXANNE GAY
Memoir/Autobiography

New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

TRIGGER WARNING: Contains stories of rape and sexual assault specific to young women.

Meeting date: 1/29/18

 
 

THE BURNING GIRL | CLAIRE MESSUD
Novel

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality―crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence.

Meeting date: 4/30/2018

 
 

TEXT ME WHEN YOU GET HOME: THE EVOLUTION AND TRIUMPH OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP | KAYLEEN SCHAEFER
Nonfiction

Text Me When You Get Home is a personal and sociological examination--and ultimately a celebration--of the evolution of female friendship in pop culture and modern society. "Text me when you get home." After joyful nights out together, female friends say this to one another as a way of cementing their love. It's about safety; but more than that, it's about solidarity. 

Journalist Kayleen Schaefer relays her journey of modern female friendship: from being a competitive teenager to trying to be one of the guys in the workplace to ultimately awakening to the power of female friendship and the soulmates, girl squads, and chosen families that come with it. 

The end result is a validation of female friendship that's never existed before.

Meeting date: 7/30/2018

 
 

HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES | CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
Short story collection

Her Body and Other Parties blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. 

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Meeting date: 10/29/2018