While in a long distance relationship with her college boyfriend W., she repeatedly writes about her ‘spinster wish’ in her journal. Though not without romantic entanglements, it is a life that separates itself from the traditional notion of couplehood, which include cohabitation and marriage.Īside from using initials in lieu of first names, Bolick recounts past relationships with unflinching honesty and sometimes, surprising alacrity. Throughout the book, she details her own journey towards her brand of spinsterhood-a life lived mostly and happily in solitude or with like-minded individuals. Her book Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own is one part autobiography and one part history lesson. “Whom to marry and when will it happen? These two questions define every woman’s existence, regardless of where she was raised or what religion she does or doesn’t practice… These dual contingencies govern her until they’re answered, even if the answers are nobody and never.”Īnd with that begins Kate Bolick’s highly informative, compelling, and entertaining defense against the dominating cultural viewpoint against single women (a.k.a. Genre: Non-Fiction, Cultural Criticism, Feminist Literature, Social Commentary She speaks frequently at colleges and conferences, and has appeared on The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, MSNBC, and numerous NPR programs across the country.īolick grew up in Newburyport, MA, and lives in Brooklyn, NY, and New Haven, CT.Title: Spinster (Making a Life of One’s Own) She has also taught at Brooklyn College, Columbia University, and NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
Previously, she was executive editor of Domino, a columnist for The Boston Globe's Ideas Section, and online literary editor of The Atlantic.īolick is currently a Lecturer in English at Yale University, and an adjunct professor in the Cultural Reporting & Criticism MA Program at New York University. Her newest book, Every Friend a Phantom, is forthcoming from Random House in 2024.īolick’s journalism and criticism has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The New Yorker online, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue, among other publications. She co-authored March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women (Library of America, 2019), and wrote introductions to The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Penguin Classics, 2019), Flowers and their Meanings: The Secret Language and History of Over 600 Blooms, by Karen Azoulay (Clarkson Potter, March 2023), and The Prodigal Women, by Nancy Hale (Library of America, May 2023). Her first book, the best-selling Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2015 and translated into multiple languages.
Kate Bolick is an author and freelance journalist.
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