Chloe Caldwell
Chloe Caldwell took an unusual approach to coming out as queer. Instead of telling people, she wrote a book about what she was going through. It was “Women,” a 2014 novella about a 20-something who has her first same-sex relationship with an older lover and tries to figure out what that means about her sexuality. Lena Dunham called it “a beautiful read/perfect primer for an explosive lesbian affair/an essential truth.” Readers took to it in a way she never expected. “When I was about to publish ‘Women,’ I remember feeling like it was going to be this obscure or taboo book,” Caldwell says. “But the way it was embraced by women of all backgrounds and sexual identities has touched me to my core.” It also helped her profoundly. “Writing ‘Women’ helped me process my identity and feelings around it,” she says. Exploring her emotions through her craft, it seems, was what she was meant to do. The prolific upstate New York-based scribe is also the author of two essay collections, “I’ll Tell You In Person” and “Legs Get Led Astray,” and she’s also written for Lenny Letter, Hobart, Salon, the Rumpus and Vice. “In my twenties, I was failing at everything except for writing,” she says. Instead of going to college, she took writing classes, and never looked back. “Writing,” she says, “was the only thing that motivated me.”—SJ
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