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:
Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage by Kelly Foster LundquistRead about the other books on Rollins's list at Electric Lit.
Lundquist’s tender memoir unpacks the trope of “the beard”: a heterosexual woman who unknowingly enters into a relationship with a closeted gay man.Raised in conservative evangelical culture, she and her partner digested rigid narratives about gender roles. To live up to the expectation of being a desirable, traditional woman, many of Lundquist’s scenes include descriptions of hunger and obsessions with weight loss. But mid-narrative, there’s a shift: She begins to indulge. And grow. In one evocative scene, after being told she was “getting too damn skinny,” she shovels fresh pesto straight from the blades of a blender into her mouth, the licorice and pepper taste of basil intermingling with traces of blood from her tongue.
--Marshal Zeringue
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