Deborah Copaken
Deborah Copaken is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, she was also a TV writer on the Golden Globe-nominated Emily in Paris, a performer (The Moth, etc.), and an Emmy Award–winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Paris Match, among others. Her column “When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist” was adapted for the Modern Love streaming series. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Ladyparts: A Memoir (Random House, August 2021)
From the New York Times bestselling author of Shutterbabe comes a frank, witty, and dazzlingly written memoir of one woman trying to keep it together while her body falls apart.
I’m crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not a metaphor. They are actual pieces.
Twenty years after the publication of her iconic Shutterbabe, we remeet Deborah Copaken at her darkly comedic nadir: battered, broke, divorcing, dissected, and dying––literally––on sexism’s battlefield as she deliriously scoops up what she believes to be her internal organs, which have fallen out of her body, into a glass Tupperware container before heading off to the hospital for emergency surgery . . . in an UberPool.
Part cri de coeur cautionary tale, part dystopian tragicomedy, Ladyparts is Copaken’s irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America. With her journalist’s eye, her novelist’s heart, and her performer’s sense of timing, she provides a frontline account of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, lack of healthcare, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her father’s death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and just plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one on top of the other, which provide the book’s narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. She keeps bouncing back from each bum body part and finding the black humor in every setback, but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net.
Turning her Harlem home into a commune to pay rent and have childcare, she trades her life as a bestselling novelist to apply for full-time corporate gigs that come with health insurance but often not scruples. She gets fired from an online health magazine for being unhealthy; laid off from a PR firm soon after rushing home to deal with a child’s medical emergency; and sexually harassed out of her newspaper column, only to be grilled by the FBI when her harasser is offered a plum job in the White House.
Side-splittingly funny one minute, a freak horror show the next, and quintessentially American, Ladyparts is an era-defining memoir for our time.
Praise and Press for Ladyparts
“Eye-opening, breathtaking, terrifying, enraging, but most of all heartbreakingly funny—I recommend it for everyone I know, but most of all to the men. We know almost nothing about the women we love, their bodies and their struggles. Don’t look away—read this book.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning, NYT bestselling author of Less
“Ladyparts is, quite simply, a beautiful book. Equal part harrowing and hilarious, enraging and heartwarming, it’s a memoir unlike any other. It will open your eyes to what it means to be female in a male world, older in a society built around youth worship–or just on the wrong side of variance when the lottery of genes and life doesn’t turn in your favor. And it will do it all while making you laugh, cry, and scream in turn. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Maria Konnikova, NYT bestselling author of The Biggest Bluff and The Confidence Game
“Ladyparts is a first-rate example of the contemporary memoir, harrowing, sad, funny, revelatory, true. Were you to misconstrue the title, you might think this was all simply anatomy, which would be fine, but as with all the best memoirs what this work really anatomizes is how it all feels–in the mind, in the soul, and in the nick of time. Copaken’s memoir is poignant, necessary, and very rewarding.”
—Rick Moody, award-winning author of The Ice Storm and The Long Accomplishment
“Utterly vital. Ladyparts enraged and amused me in equal measure. Deborah Copaken shows what it means to barely survive beyond the hallowed slice of privilege, where moving through the world in a woman’s body can be dangerous, absurd, frustrating, beautiful, and sometimes all at once. A wickedly smart, thoroughly investigated and elegantly written takedown of the gender discrimination and institutional misogyny we have accepted for too long. This book howls for women in a world that too often only allows us a whisper.”
—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and What We’ve Lost is Nothing
“Reading this terrific book makes you feel like you’re Deb Copaken’s pal, and lucky that you’re getting to hang out. She lives life with gusto and resilience, appreciates her good luck, learns from her rotten luck, nails the villains along the way––and chronicles it all with breathtaking honesty and screwball good humor as she zig-zags through middle age in the general direction of wisdom and contentment.”
—Kurt Andersen, NYT bestselling author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland
“A fierce, caustic, joyful and deeply courageous account of what it means to go through life in a female body, this book (like women ourselves) is so much greater than the sum of its parts, yet each part, and each page, is truly phenomenal.”
—Peggy Orenstein, NYT bestselling author of Girls & Sex
“On every vivid page, through every jaw-dropping, anatomically outrageous chapter, Ladyparts showcases Deborah Copaken’s scintillating ability to hold rage and humor together in one fist, alchemizing them into a literary force greater than either single emotion. The result is a memoir that is both weapon and balm, a courageous call to arms and a moving, hilarious deep dive into the pain and joy of a woman’s life in these early years of the 21st Century.”
—John Burnham Schwartz, bestselling author of The Red Daughter and The Commoner
“The most laugh-out-loud story of resilience you’ll ever read, but also one that provides an essential road map for the importance of narrative as a tool of healing: how we tell our stories is just as important––if not more so––as the plot twists we experience.”
—Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone
“Ladyparts is a memoir unlike any I’ve ever read — it’s quite literally visceral, from the unforgettable first moment where Copaken crawls on the tile floor collecting what she takes to be her own bloody organs. With breathtaking candor, Copaken catalogues the calamities of her body, part by part, spinning out a raw, raucous, often hilarious account of herself — with so much insight and generosity that I finished the book feeling re-made.”
—Semi Chellas, award-wining writer/producer, Mad Men and The Romanoffs
“Every chapter of Deborah Copaken’s memoir contains information about women’s bodies that I couldn’t believe no one had told me before. I was constantly outraged at what she had to endure to learn it all, but the book is so funny, smart, and entertaining that I’m grateful to have her as a guide. Ladyparts is essential reading for all women, and for the people who love them.
—Maile Meloy, award-winning author of Do Not Become Alarmed
“I want every single woman, and every human who has loved (or even met) a woman, to read this essential book. This deeply personal memoir manages to encapsulate in its pages virtually every way society conspires to screw us over, from sexual assault to workplace harassment to the absurd and nearly fatal gender inequities in the healthcare system. And yet it is also warm and compassionate and, yes, hysterically funny. It is a page-turner that makes you scream in empathetic frustration, and laugh so hard you have to put the book down. I’m honestly not sure whether I cried more because I was laughing or because I was so very sad.”
—Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Treasure and A Really Good Day
“This book is a must read for anyone who knows a woman, loves a woman, or is a woman. Deborah’s sharp wit, heartfelt humor and unabashed honesty turn what could be a tragic tale into a heroic journey of perseverance. Anyone who reads it will walk away feeling inspired.”
—Katherine Schwarzenegger, NYT bestselling author of The Gift of Forgiveness
“Ladyparts is in equal measure raw, unshrinking, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Deborah Copaken has been both a war photographer in Afghanistan and a single working mother in America, but take a quick guess as to which experience has been more dangerous. Lucky for her, she lived through both to tell the tale. Lucky for us, she has transformed her unique traumas into wholly relatable gold. Few people write like Deb: her ability to translate the workings of her dazzling mind into prose is without parallel.”
—Donal Logue, actor and author of Trejo
“Filled with stories of what it’s like to be a woman and a writer in America today, and heart-wrenching moments of injustice and redemption, this page-turner of a memoir is harrowing, hopeful and urgent. If you are a woman, it will change the way you look at the parts that make you and the parts that you play. If you are a man, it will illuminate you. And if you are either, or neither, it will move you and transform you. This memoir is visceral and beautiful. Thank you Deborah Copaken for writing this brave and brilliant book. Ladyparts is an absolute must-read.”
—Ariana Neumann, NYT bestselling author of When Time Stopped
“Ladyparts is an unmanicured middle finger to an archaic culture that shames women into suffering in silence. It is a bold love letter to ‘women warriors,’ championing self-reliance while tackling the societal obstacles unrelentingly thrown in that path. Deborah Copaken shines a light on her scars, bravely helping those who cover their own feel less alone.”
—AJ Mendez, NYT bestselling author of Crazy is My Superpower and mental health advocate
“Ladyparts is a beautifully written, boots-on-the-ground, first person chronicle of everything that can go wrong with women’s bodies and too often, does. Deb’s book is an important addition to the field of women’s health, from the lens of a patient.”
– Dr. Lisa Mosconi, NYT bestselling author of The XX Brain
Deborah Copaken & Randy Polumbo
Randy Polumbo
Randy Polumbo is a renowned sculptor, photographer, and illustrator. His art has been privately collected and publicly exhibited, both in the United States and abroad. He lives at the southernmost tip of Manhattan and is the proud father of a nearly adult daughter.
The ABCs of Parenthood: An Alphabet of Parenting Advice (Chronicle Books, August 29, 2017)
A wise, warm, and witty gift for new (and gently used) parents seeking to raise positive, thoughtful children, this alphabet book brims with the advice only those who’ve been there can give. From “D is for Dog” (get one) to “P is for Praise” (do it often but appropriately) to “R is for Romance” (keep it alive after the kids come), each mini essay is coupled with a smart, letter-appropriate full-color photograph in these delightfully grown-up ABCs.
Praise and Press for The ABCs of Parenthood
“You will come back to The ABCs of Parenthood again and again, whenever you need to remember the big picture or the fact that children are as breathtaking as the images on these pages.”
– Diane Debrovner, Parents Magazine
The ABCs of Parenthood is a warm, witty, wise and visually delightful book. Absolutely essential reading for anyone who’s had a parent, been a parent, wants to be a parent or knows a parent. An utter gem!
– Julie Klam, author of You Had Me at Woof
Deborah Copaken and Randy Polumbo are the Buddhas of soulful parenting. They’ve broken it down into easily digestible A-Z concepts which promote kindness, compassion, self-reliance, and love. Plus they’re both artists, so the stunning photo illustrations are works of art in and of themselves. This book will teach you to stop hovering and worrying and start letting go and enjoying the ride. I plan on giving it to every new parent I meet.
– Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Treasure
The ABCs of Adulthood (Chronicle Books, April 19, 2016)
Here’s a book full of honest, warm, and funny advice that’s perfect for anyone celebrating a graduation or coming-of-age birthday—or who’d just welcome some need-to-know pointers on navigating the twists and turns of adulthood. From New York Times bestselling author Deborah Copaken and noted artist Randy Polumbo, these ABCs range from the practical (B is for Bed—the joys of making it) to the profound (R is for Risk—always worth taking it). With street-smart photography to accompany each letter and good spirit on every page, The ABCs of Adulthood is a world-wise introduction to the joys of being all grown up.
Praise and Press for The ABCs of Adulthood
“The ABCs of Adulthood is the perfect combination of humor, wisdom, practical advice, and gorgeous photos. An invaluable resource for anyone grappling with the challenges of being a grown-up (and isn’t that all of us?).”
– Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
“I read The ABCs of Adulthood thinking it would be appropriate for my kids, and found its wise and witty lessons relevant for myself, too. And I’ve been making my bed every morning ever since!”
– Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Treasure