Welcome to MarieClaire. If you're interested in the novel and looking for some friends to talk about it with, find out how to participate in MarieClaire. Now, with her latest novel, City of Girls , she hopes her writing "goes down like a tray of champagne cocktails. Set in the NYC theater world during the s, the book explores main character Vivian's path to living her truth after she's kicked out of boarding school at 19 and forced to live with her aunt, who owns a theater called the Lily Playhouse.
From there, she's able to fully explore her sexuality and promiscuityβunapologeticallyβand later reflect on how those events altered the course of her life. In true Liz Gilbert form, she did research for five! Here, Gilbert explains why it's so important to show that women still desire sex during the MeToo era, and how she's applying the lessons she's given to her City of Girls characters to her own life.
Marie Claire: What inspired you to write City of Girls? Get exclusive access to fashion and beauty trends, hot-off-the-press celebrity news, and more. How was the writing process different going from advising readers on living their most creative life to developing a story about sex, adventure, all of that good stuff?
EG: I think Big Magic is the biggest departure I have ever taken as a writer, because it was purely a self-help book. All my other books whether fiction or non-fiction have been about storytelling. Big Magic was about me sitting down and pondering all the questions that people have asked me over the years about my own creative process, and simply trying to figure out how I could be of service.
EG: Women are still taught that there is a very, very narrow path that they have to walk in order to be considered responsible, respectable, reasonable, and "good. But as Vivian says in my novel, "At some point, a woman just gets tired of being ashamed all the time.
