Eve Ensler – författare

2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of V-Day, the radical grassroots movement to end violence against women and girls, inspired by Eve Ensler's international sensation The Vagina Monologues. This special edition features six never-before-published monologues, a new foreword by National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson, a new introduction by the author, and a new afterword by One Billion Rising director Monique Wilson on the stage phenomenon's global impact.A landmark work in women's empowerment, as relevant as ever after a year marked by unprecedented social and political protest in the face of unapologetic racism and misogyny, The Vagina Monologues honours women's sexuality in all its complexity, mystery and power. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, this award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies, fears, anger and pleasure, and calls for a world where all women are safe, equal, free and alive in their bodies.'This play changed the world. Seeing it changed my soul. Performing in it changed my life'Kerry Washington

I have been exiled from my body. I was ejected at a very young age and I got lost.Playwright, author and activist Eve Ensler has devoted her life to the female body - how to talk about it, how to protect and value it. Yet she spent many years disassociated from her own - a disconnection brought on by her father's sexual abuse and her mother's remoteness.While working in the Congo, Ensler is shattered to encounter the horrific rape and violence inflicted on the women there. Soon after, she is diagnosed with uterine cancer, and through months of treatment she is forced to become first and foremost a body - pricked, punctured, cut, scanned. It is then that all distance is erased. As she connects her own illness to the devastation of the earth, her life force to the resilience of humanity, she is finally, fully - and gratefully - joined to the body of the world.

Female spoken word artists have become the spokeswomen for a new generation. This demanding oral poetry of the early 21st century has defined a vanguard of lithely muscled voices women who think and act decisively to create their distinctive and desperately earned realities. The combination of the eminent slam movement and the upsurge of bold underground feminism has created a unique pool of women who verbally challenge society on all fronts.Editor Alix Olson (internationally touring spoken word artist-activist) brought together a variety of astounding spoken word artists for Word Warriors . Included in this collection are Patricia Smith and Eileen Myles, two of our most formidable spoken-word foremothers, Tony-award winners Sarah Jones, Suheir Hammad and Staceyann Chin, recording artists Bitch and Lynn Breedlove from the dyke-punk band Tribe 8, award-winning writer Michelle Tea, and many more. These women join other amazing artists from many different backgrounds to create Word Warriors , a powerful and comprehensive collection of work from the best and brightest female spoken word artists today.