Featured Author: Caitlin Moran

'What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.
~Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran is an English journalist, TV presenter, and author.  The oldest of eight home-educated children, she wrote her first novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, at age fifteen. Caitlin (once you read her books, you'll feel like you can be on a first name basis with her as well) has had a checkered career after that - working for Melody Maker, presenting a TV show, Naked City - before joining the staff of The Times, a British daily newspaper. Caitlin writes regular columns for The Times, one about television and the other is "the most-read part of the paper, the satirical celebrity column ‘Celebrity Watch’". A comedy series written by Caitlin and her sister Caroline and loosely based on their youth, Raised by Wolves, is currently running on British TV.

Her first adult book, How To Be a Woman, brought her international attention in 2012. Vanity Fair called it "the U.K. version of Tina Fey’s Bossypants" - it's a fresh and funny take on feminism today, interspersed with memoir. Caitlin followed that up with Moranthology, a collection of her columns which gives us her uncensored views on pop culture. Her latest, How To Build a Girl, which Helen Fielding (author Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) described as "[b]rilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny", is the coming-of-age story of a 14-year old girl in 1990 who reinvents herself.

Looking for a smart, saucy, hilarious read?  Look no further.  Caitlin is beloved by Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess), Peggy Orenstein, Ayelet Waldman, Zoe Heller, Alexandra Heminsley, and Lena Dunham.  If you like to read Laurie Notaro, Sloane Crosley, Mindy Kaling, and Nora Ephron, do give Caitlin a try!

Links

Not a Feminist?  Caitlin Moran Asks, Why Not? [NPR]

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran review - a Portnoy's Complaint for girls [Guardian]

Raised By Wolves - TV review [Guardian] 

Atrocious mess, precocious mind: Meet Caitlin Moran, newspaper columnist, TV presenter, pop music pundit...and typical teenage slob [Independent, 1994] 

Caitlin Moran: my letter to the future - video [Guardian]