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