Alix Kates Shulman

Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen created a profound impact on the cultural landscape when it was originally 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.

OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD The cult classic that defined a generation - first UK publication in 47 years 'An extraordinary novel ... women will like it and men should read it for the good of their immortal souls' Los Angeles Times Sasha Davis has everything a girl in 1950s suburbia could want: beauty, intelligence and an all-star sports captain boyfriend. All she needs to succeed is to keep her skin clear and her intelligence hidden under her Prom Queen tiara. But when she drops out of college to marry, Sasha soon realises her life has become a fearful countdown to her thirtieth birthday - the year when her beauty will have faded, and life as she knows it will end. As Sasha rebels against her fate, she finds herself experiencing an intellectual and sexual awakening that might be her only chance of outrunning the aging process. First published in 1972, Alix Kates Shulman's landmark novel follows Sasha's coming of age through the sexual double standards, job discrimination and harassment of the 1950s and 60s. Five decades later, it remains a funny and heartbreaking story of a young woman in a man's world.

A provocative collection of essays by one of the foremost thinkers of second-wave feminismIn a career spanning four decades, Alix Kates Shulman has written on issues ranging from marriage, sex, and divorce to religious identity, age, and family devotion. Throughout her diverse body of work runs a staunch advocacy of equal rights and social justice. Beginning with her provocative essay “A Marriage Agreement,” written in 1969, and continuing through to the heartrending “Caring for an Ill Spouse, and Other Caregivers,” written in 2011, this collection provides a window into the social movements that defined an era. Witty, stirring, and poignant, A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays illustrates how each generation, in Shulman’s words, “can do no more than add its bit to the endless river of consciousness and change.”

A memoir of spiritualism and self-discovery from the acclaimed, award-winning author At fifty, Alix Kates Shulman, author of the celebrated feminist novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, left a city life dense with political activism, family and literary community, and went to live alone on an island off the coast of Maine. On a windswept beach, in a cabin with no plumbing, power, or telephone, she found that she was learning to live all over again. In this luminous, spirited book, she charts her subsequent path as she learned not simply the joys of meditative solitude, but to integrate her new awareness into a busy, committed, even hectic mainland life. "A ten-year voyage of discovery . . . Shulman's honesty and sense of inquiry carry us with her all the way--could even, if we were willing, change our lives." --San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle