Lena Dunham’s Squad of Smart Female Editors Posts Book Recommendations

It’ll be a couple of months before the first issue of Lenny, the Lena Dunham e-newsletter, hits inboxes, bearing a freight of Dunham-curated content about “feminism, style, health, politics, friendship and everything else.” But in the meantime, the editors of Lenny have started hosting Lit Thursdays: a feature on the newsletter’s Facebook page and Instagram, where the women of Lenny (Dunham included) say what they’re reading and why they like it.

It’s a distinguished pool of recommenders to draw from. Editor-in-chief Jessica Grose is a novelist with two books under her belt (her latest, The Closest Marriage, comes out next year), and a former editor of Jezebel and Slate. Editor-at-large Doreen St. Felix writes for Hairpin, BuzzFeed, The Guardian, and n+1, and recently published the best essay about Rihanna you’ve ever read. Associate editor Laia Garcia is a stylist/writer, and a mainstay at the Tavi Gevinson e-zine Rookie.

The posts started appearing on July 16, and since then, the editors have gifted their nod of approval to eight titles, including Elena Ferrante’s standalone novel about a painful divorce, The Days of Abandonment, Caroline Zancan’s Local Girls, and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (which our reviewer liked too). Dunham said of her July 23 picks, “I am digging both Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe, and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, by Anna North, because they have gorgeous covers, glamorous women’s names in the title, and you can never go wrong with some fiction about a renegade woman!”

Wise words from the millennial guru whose resume, it seems, knows no bounds. We’re excited to read smart women recommend by smart women, with the pejorative term “chick lit” nowhere to be found.