Lindy West
Comedian and activist Lindy West discusses her memoir Adult Braces, a road trip through fame, depression, marriage, and personal rediscovery with sharp humor.
Why we picked this
West writes about serious subjects — body politics, internet harassment, grief — with a comedian's timing and a polemicist's conviction, which makes her live events feel more like confessionals than book tours.
Lindy West made her name writing with uncommon fearlessness about subjects that most publications didn’t know how to handle: fat acceptance, online harassment, the moral logic of comedy. Her columns at The Stranger and The Guardian, and later her book “Shrill,” demonstrated that it was possible to be funny and precise and genuinely angry all at once — a combination that turned her into one of the more influential cultural voices of the past decade.
“Adult Braces” takes a different register. The memoir covers a period of personal unraveling — fame, depression, a cross-country road trip, and the kind of self-examination that doesn’t yield tidy conclusions. West brings the same honesty she’s always had, but the target has shifted inward. The result is a book that uses humor not as a deflection but as a tool for getting at things that are otherwise too uncomfortable to say plainly.
At Sydney Goldstein Theater, a venue that suits this kind of intimate storytelling, West’s live presence tends to be sharper and warmer than even her writing suggests. City Arts & Lectures consistently programs writers whose live events reward the in-person experience, and West is exactly that kind of performer.