Ashley Whitaker is a writer from Texas. She received her MFA in Prose from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program. Her work has appeared in Tin House, StoryQuarterly, and has received support from the Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Austin with her family.
Whitaker's first novel is Bitter Texas Honey.
At Electric Lit the author tagged eight novels that "satirize their main characters’ literary ambitions. Each ... features a writer main character at varying career stages, battling against their own ego." One title on the list:
Perfume and Pain by Anna DornRead about another novel on the list.
In Dorn’s sharp, hilarious, and compulsively readable tale of lesbian chaos, 35-year-old novelist Astrid Dahl is struggling to write her fourth book. She longs for the naïve confidence she possessed in her twenties, and finds herself crippled in the wake of the criticism she’s received after being politically incorrect at a Barnes and Noble event. Dorn’s handling of Astrid’s authorly ego is delightfully ironic and embarrassingly relatable. People with healthy egos don’t become writers, Astrid muses early on. They become engineers.
--Marshal Zeringue