The Literary Workshop

Radical lesbian feminist theorist and author Monique Wittig theorizes writing as labor and demonstrates where literature’s political power comes from.

The Literary Workshop takes readers inside Monique Wittig’s creative process, unlocking the practice of writing both in material and political terms. Wittig provides her most complete account of how literature and politics work together.

Part of the generation that revolutionized French literature, Wittig reveals the secret of her craft: that the work a writer does with language is itself a form of resistance.

Born and raised in France, Monique Wittig (1935–2003) was a driving force in second-wave feminism and one of the most brilliant authors of her generation. A provocative thinker, she famously declared that lesbians are not women and introduced women into a materialist framework by treating them as a class.

Wittig is the author of, among other titles, The Straight Mind, Les Guérillères, and The Lesbian Body. Her debut novel, The Opoponax, won Le Prix Medicis.