Jessica Valenti, author of SEX OBJECT, discusses her new memoir with Rachel Hills, author of THE SEX MYTH, followed by a dialogue between Kate Layte and Katie Eelman on the book.
Jessica Valenti - called one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world - is a columnist for theGuardian US and the author of four books on feminism, politics and culture. Her third book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women, won the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Award and was made into a documentary by the Media Education Foundation. She is also editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, which was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 100 Books of 2009.
She founded Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review called “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.” Her writing has appeared inThe New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian (UK), The American Prospect, Ms. magazine, Salon and Bitch magazine. She has won an IBIS Reproductive Health Evidence in Activism Award, a Choice USA Generation award and the 2011 Hillman Journalism Prize for her work with Feministing.
Rachel Hills has written about feminism and politics for ABC’s The Drum, The Age, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Daily Life, Elle, Girlfriend, Glamour, Grazia, Jezebel, The Monthly, The New Inquiry, New Matilda, The New Republic, NYMag.com, Russh, The Spectator, Stylist, Sunday Life, The Sydney Morning Herald, TIME, Vogue, The Walkley Magazine, YEN and more.
She is also the author of a book called The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Reality, which published in North America, Australia, New Zealand and the UK in August 2015.