Memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel was working on this, her final personal essay, when she passed away on January 7th, 2020 from metastatic breast cancer. In the piece she reveals that as her health was declining, her marriage was unraveling, and that she was still wrestling with new information her mother finally revealed a couple of years […]
Prozac Nation
Grandiose and Claustrophobic: ‘Prozac Nation’ Turns 25
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?
Bastard: Neither of My Parents Was Exactly Who I Thought They Were
In this personal essay, author Elizabeth Wurtzel shares the bombshell that was recently dropped on her — that her father was not Donald Wurtzel, but rather civil rights era photojournalist Bob Adelman — and tries to make sense of her mother’s choice to keep the secret of her affair (and her daughter’s true paternity) for […]
The New Age of Anxiety
W.H. Auden named it 70 years ago, and our latest age of anxiety is one of Xanax, fidget spinners, and constant swiping.
Exile in Guyville
Liz Phair and Elizabeth Wurtzel discuss the sexism they each are seeing everywhere.
Elizabeth Wurtzel Interview
Singer-songwriter Liz Phair interviews author Elizabeth Wurtzel on the occasion of the 20-year reissuing of Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, originally published in 1997. The two discuss writing memoir vs. writing fiction (Phair herself is at work on a novel and a book of linked essays), feminism, motherhood, and music.