I’m a writer and editor.

Books

A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again

Read an edited extract from the opening of the book here

Hear me talking about the book on the LARB Radio Hour here

Finalist for the 2023 National Award for Arts Writing / Marfield Prize

‘A meditation, by turns glorious and aching, on what it means to be a woman and to try to be free’ (Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex)

‘Written with profound sensitivity and a singular eye for detail, this book is engrossing, surprising, and moving reading for anyone interested in what it means to write—and to live.’ (Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts)

‘To make sense of and find a shape to one’s life within the context of one’s literary predecessors is the project of Biggs’s brilliant book, which combines incisive biographies with a personal story of starting over. This book reframed my own life in the most startling and revealing ways, illuminating complicated desires and lifelong debates via the absorbing stories of nine women authors who I now consider sisters, teachers, kin. A deeply moving meditation on reading and writing, friendship, desire, the life of the mind, and the woman writer's perennial yearning to be free.’ (Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch)

‘Joanna Biggs is an unmissable writer. She gives new scope and fresh meaning to the idea of literary empathy.’ (Andrew O’Hagan, author of Mayflies)

‘Joanna Biggs is one of our sharpest critics and wisest interrogators of how to live. This is a deeply moving and invigorating book.’ (Francesca Wade, author of Square Haunting)

Buy it in the US from your local indie or Bookshop.org

Buy it in the UK from your local indie or Bookshop.org

All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work

‘Detailed, quirky and faithful in its likeness, yet underneath [it] simmers with an artist’s rage at the unfairness of it all . . . an intelligent, surprising and elegantly written book.’ (Lucy Kellaway in the FT)

‘Biggs has a lovely calm, measured style, with just a hint of menace behind it – like a tour guide in a stately home who suddenly pulls out a baseball bat and holds it there, smiling.’ (Julie Burchill in the Spectator)

 

Essays and Journalism

‘Let It Tumble’: an interview with the NYRB, 2024

At the Hairdresser for Granta, 2024

‘Jealous Laughter’ for Granta, 2023

The Divorce Plot for the Guardian, 2023

On Taylor Swift for the LRB blog, 2021

The Way She Is Now’ for the LRB, 2019

Abortion in Northern Ireland’ for the LRB, 2017

The Secrets of the Forgotten 1965 classic Talking to Women’ for the New Yorker online, 2017

‘In Analysis’ for Areté, 2017

‘Institution’, flash fiction, for TANK, 2014

Interview with Wolfgang Tillmans for the Guardian, 2014

Transcendental Wardrobes’ for the LRB, 2014

At the Food Bank’ for the LRB, 2013

In Beijing among the Writers’ for the LRB, 2012

Who will get legal aid now?’ for the LRB, 2011

At the Occupation’ for the LRB, 2010

 

Reviews

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney for the LRB, 2024

Madonna: A Rebel Life by Mary Gabriel for the NYRB, 2024

The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta for the LRB, 2024

The Bloodied Nightgown by Joan Acocella for the New York Times Book Review, 2024

Twice Lost by Phyllis Paul for Harper’s Magazine, 2024

Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza for the New York Review of Books, 2023

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey for the London Review of Books, 2023

Siblings by Brigitte Reimann for the New Yorker, 2023

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett for Bookforum, 2022

Patriarchy of the Wage by Silvia Federici for the New Republic, 2022

Exteriors by Annie Ernaux for the LRB, 2021

Having and Being Had by Eula Biss for Sidecar, 2021

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner for the LRB, 2019

‘In Praise of Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come’ for Another Gaze, 2018

The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst for Harper’s, 2018

Future Sex by Emily Witt for the Financial Times, 2016

Swing Time by Zadie Smith for the LRB, 2016

Nutshell by Ian McEwan for the Nation, 2016

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison for the Sunday Times, 2014

How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti for the LRB, 2013