Girls Gone Old

Fiona Helmsley

Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-0996421850
Price: 15.95 American
August 2017

About Girls Gone Old

"Girls Gone Old is timely, not only in regard to its unabashed third and fourth wave feminism. The essays collected here cover pop culture icons, class and wealth, addiction, rape culture, even the popularity of Donald Trump. On this last, she writes, “I think this is the real divide in this country: the social principles of empathy, vs the social principles of greed.” It is this kind of insight, discovered through the laying bare of her own actions and decisions, that makes Girls Gone Old so admirable."

—Sara Rauch, BUST

 

2016 was a pivotal year for Fiona Helmsley, and on the eve of her 40th birthday, an old friend questioned the subject matter of her writing: why, so often, did Fiona reflect back on the questionable choices she made when she was younger. Wasn't 40 a good age to grow up and move on to more mature subject matter?

A few months after her friend's question, a much more monumental and catastrophic event occurred, making the decade of Fiona’s youth come careening back at everyone: professional ignoramus Donald J. Trump was elected president; the ‘80s, the decade Fiona had grown up in, had ascended to the Oval Office, big time.

In Girls Gone Old Fiona Helmsley doesn't answer her friend’s question so much as she subverts it. With new essays about the confluence of late 20th century television, art, and sexual fantasy; addiction and illness; school shootings and serial killers; family; Andy Warhol, Mork & Mindy; and the sleazy (yet sexy) misogyny of Axl Rose, Girls Gone Old rebukes the notion of the self as a lesser muse.

Fiona Helmsley Visits Salon.com




Fiona Helmsley

About Fiona Helmsley

Fiona Helmsley's writing can be found online at websites like The Rumpus, Jezebel, The Weeklings, The Hairpin, PANK and in various anthologies like Ladyland and The Best Sex Writing of the Year. A multiple Pushcart nominee, her book of essays and stories, My Body Would be the Kindest of Strangers was released in 2015. She is an MFA candidate at L’École de Merde.