Shannon Waite immerses us in a world of lipstick, catcalls, and blurry nudes, mining girl-and-womanhood to uncover its rough gems, cracking open their possibilities. Do we get into that man's car? Force that kiss? Finally sing karaoke? Do we ever, ever listen to our mothers? The Women is a tapestry of voices, interlocked and overlapping, that blurs lines and boundaries; it made me relieved I'm grown, but quickly reminded me of the baggage that comes with that. 
—EMILY COSTA, author of Girl on Girl
 
Shannon Waite's The Women is every middle finger Frances Farmer raised in a courtroom, every slurred "fuck you" Marilyn uttered late night into a phone, every one of us as rebellious teen girls who grew up into 'unhinged' (read: uncontrollable) women. Read it to remember who we are. 
—ELIZABETH ELLEN, author of American Thighs
 
The Women is femme theory written through the charged debris of a culture that consumes girls. In these stunning, polyvocal stories, Shannon Waite traces how girls and women are shaped by hunger and by the uneasy gift—and grift—of tenderness. These stories reveal how feminine frameworks are imposed, then ruptured—where the self is unraveled by the long, strange work of becoming luminous. With the observational heat of Lucia Berlin and the psychic acuity of Hélène Cixous, Waite composes a gutsy, feral, and necessary vision sharpened by a voice that insists on naming itself. I just loved it. It was such a pleasure to spend time in the ditches with these fierce, unforgettable characters.  
—SELAH SATERSTROM, author of Slab and The Meat and Spirit Plan                   
 
The Women is raw and gritty in all the ways that it aims to be. It's also beautiful in its heartbreak, true in the ways its women transcend the transgressive realities they almost always face. It's like going through your old high school yearbook that somehow made it through your basement flood. Whatever happened to her? we often wonder, pointing at the weird girl, the burnout girl, the outsider we secretly loved. Shannon Waite has all the answers to our questions. She knows the truths behind the stories of those girls. They lived, yes, sometimes just barely getting by and surviving. In Shannon Waite's good hands, in her caring and tender ways of rendering the women that those girls grew up to be, I would say they even shine.  
—PETER MARKUS, author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds 

• Sign at the Barnes & Noble Michigan Trail of Authors event in Muskegon, MI (September 27, 2025)
• Appear on podcasts like Salt Lake Dirt and others
• Promote ARCS to reviewers, retailers, and bookstagrammers
• Offer preorders of the signed book and other marketing materials like stickers and beady buddies
• Advertise The Women's free materials (playlist, Pinterest board, and book club resources)
• Advertise the related book, Raising Women, and its downloads downloadables: cootie catcher, paper doll, and mix/playlist
• Promote on social media
• Contact bookstores