Melissa Febos co-curates and hosts New York City's Mixer Reading and Music series, has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and teaches at both SUNY Purchase and the Gotham Writers' Workshop. En route to all of this, she spent much of her younger adult life as a sex worker. She tells the story of her years as a drug addict and dominatrix ("one of the few high-paid acting gigs in the city") in Whip Smart (Thomas Dunne Books). "Febos' candid, hard-slugging debut about her four years working as a dominatrix at a midtown Manhattan dungeon cuts a sharp line between prurience and feminist manifesto." - Publishers Weekly. "Melissa Febos masterfully brings us into these unexpected, unsettling places, the least of which are the dungeons she so vividly—briefly—occupies. Whip Smart is a wild, bright-eyed ride home." - Nick Flynn.