Samantha Mann is the author of Putting Out: Essays on Otherness and the editor of I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy. She writes essays and articles exploring culture, mental health, motherhood, and LGBTQ issues. Her work has been featured in the Cut, Vogue, Elle, Today, Romper, and more. Her most recent book is Dyke Delusions (Read Furiously, June 3, 2025), a collection of essays on body politics, motherhood, and feminine sexuality, told with Mann's signature humor and pitch-perfect observations.
Handsell readers your book in about 25 words:
Did you grow up with the feeling that you were delusional only to become an adult and realize it was the culture at large that ingrained that idea into you?
On your nightstand now:
Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch. No one makes me reconsider my writing like Lidia. Her writing is so gorgeously her own. I read her essay "Woven" at least twice a year, hoping how she expertly weaves her stories together will rub off on me like osmosis. A few years ago, I took a "Writing Better Sex Scenes" seminar with Lidia and she astutely pointed out that women are taught to write how men get off (setting, rising action, climax, resolution, and conclusion), and that we should work hard to write in a way that matches our own experience. I think about this all the time!
Favorite book when you were a child:
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. Two children run away from home and sneak into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. While they are hiding out at night and enjoying the museum by day (and eating chocolate bars for all their meals!), they come across a mystery of an angel sculpture that might have been created by Michelangelo. The book made me want to run away from my dull suburban life and live somewhere chic!
Your top five authors:
Roxane Gay
Samantha Irby
Lidia Yuknavitch
Maggie Nelson
Melissa Febos
Book you've faked reading:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I did skim it in a bookstore for approximately five minutes, and I feel like I understand the overall gist! While I cannot get myself to finish more than one day's worth of morning pages a year, I do try to take myself on an Artist Date when I can!
Book you're an evangelist for:
Body Work by Melissa Febos. I refer to this book as the bible. If you care about nonfiction or essays, there is nothing more life affirming or insightful than this! There are still so many misnomers about essay writing that I find infuriating (mainly, "does essay-writing work cure your mental illness and isn't it bad for you to write about all this personal stuff"?). Melissa expertly breaks apart all of it and now acts as the authoritative voice in the back of my head when I hear the old whisper of... "who cares about your life?"
Book you've bought for the cover:
I don't think I've done this!
Book you hid from your parents:
Same Sex in the City (So Your Prince Charming Is Really a Cinderella) by Lauren Blitzer and Lauren Levin. My mom actually did find this book lodged between my mattress and bed frame. When she kindly asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell her, I screamed at her for having a limited scope of reading interests.
Book that changed your life:
The Hours by Michael Cunningham. As a teenager I was depressed and gay and felt embarrassed about both things. Seeing all the interesting, complex, and also depressed women in this book helped me shift my mindset from embarrassment to misunderstood creative, which was more useful! It also clarified the fact that I wasn't a 1950s housewife like Kitty, and that I could be a Clarissa. Sure, Clarissa was morose, but she also was married to a woman in a gorgeous West Village apartment.
Favorite line from a book:
"First of all, why you would ask a man anything is beyond me." --Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You
"O god, she prayed, thank You for giving me the strength to run." --Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls
Five books you'll never part with:
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
All About Love by bell hooks
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz
Devotions by Mary Oliver
Skin Game by Caroline Kettlewell
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. The use of language in this book is so beautiful it makes me wish I was a poet. Or it at least makes me wish poets would stop writing novels--it's making the rest of mortal writers look bad!