evangelical purity culture. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Electric Literature, Salon, Joyland, and more, and she has also published scholarly work in composition and writing center studies. An award-winning instructor, she taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years and is a 2025 West Virginia Creative Network Literary Arts Fellow. A lifelong Appalachian, she lives in West Virginia with her husband and their three small children.
At Electric Lit Rollins tagged seven books in which "women are hungry for love, survival, and power" and "food indulgence runs parallel to their other, gnawing appetites." One title on the list:
The Edible Woman by Margaret AtwoodRead about another title on Rollins's list.
Women’s bodies shrink as their rights shrink. Diets have long been considered through a feminist lens: If a woman is hungry and turned inward, she doesn’t have the energy or perspective to change the outside world. But in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, this reading of restriction is upended and considered in terms of awakening rather than submission. As Marian approaches an uninspiring marriage, she rejects food as a form of protest. At the conclusion, she bakes a cake shaped like a woman and insists that her fiance become the consumer. Disgusted, he refuses and leaves her. She eats some of her own cake, and with this act, her appetite returns.
--Marshal Zeringue
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