Michelle Dean is a journalist and critic. Her new book is Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion.

“There isn’t one answer. I wish there was one answer. The answer is: You just have to wing it. And I’m learning that — I’m learning to be okay with the winging it. ... I guess the lesson to me of what went on with a lot of women in the book is: You have to be comfortable with the fact that some days are going to be good, and some days are going to not be good.”

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Dean on Longform
[00:45] Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion (Grove Press • 2018)
[01:35] "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered" (Buzzfeed • Aug 2016)
[08:10] annefriedman.com
[08:50] "The Daily Show's Woman Problem" (Irin Carmon • Jezebel • June 2010)
[09:20] "Someone Got 'The Daily Show' in My Jezebel and Together They Taste A Little Weird" (The Awl • July 2010)
[15:20] "Waterworld Review" (KillerMovies • July 1995)
[20:25] Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (D. T. Max • Penguin Books • 2013)
[20:35] "A Supposedly True Thing Jonathan Franzen Said About David Foster Wallace" (The Awl • Oct 2011)
[26:25] "The Perils of Pauline" (Renata Adler • The New York Review of Books • Aug 1980)
[28:30] "How Unauthorized Is the New Book About Harper Lee?" (Gawker • July 2014)
[31:05] Dean’s Archive on The Guardian
[30:20] How Should A Person Be (Sheila Heti • Picador • 2013)
[35:30] "True Lives" (James Wood • The New Yorker • June 2012)
[35:40] "Listening to Women" (Slate • June 2012)
[40:30] Longform Podcast #156: Renatta Adler
[51:05] Mommy Dead and Dearest (Erin Lee Carr • 2017)
[51:15] Longform Podcast #248: Erin Lee Carr
[64:00] Gerard Manley Hopkins