#nostones

Research on published books similar to Naked in Public demonstrates that women’s memoirs---including themes of addiction and sexual explorations---are in high demand in today’s market.

Two New York Times bestsellers, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” chronicle their female authors’ coming of age experiences, detailing explorations into self and sexuality with humor and powerful narrative voices that balance directness with humility. While not specifically focused on sex addiction, these books answer a growing demand in modern culture for confident women’s first-person testimonies about how to navigate human needs for sex and relationship.

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” by Lena Dunham, 2014 A runaway New York Times bestseller, Not That Kind of Girl contains a series of personal essays, diary-style, that detail the sexual and other coming-of-age experiences of a twentysomething woman. Vividly written with humor and self-deprecation, Dunham writes about troubling sex, food, death, her parents, childhood memories, and her efforts to sort it all out in therapy.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed Wild is the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir of a woman’s journey of healing from grief and heroin addiction as she hikes alone over 1,000 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. Her journey includes sexual explorations she calls both reckless and necessary, as she struggles to find her way through the forest and back to herself.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert Described as the main character’s “transformational journey through Italy, India and Bali searching for pleasure and devotion,” Eat, Pray, Love has inspired the story of Naked In Public. Both works chronicle a woman searching for pleasure and devotion. Elizabeth Gilbert has subsequently published a candid article in the NY Times magazine calling herself a "seduction addict" (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/confessions-of-a-seduction-addict.html?_r=0), though this was not the focus of Eat, Pray, Love.

Lovesick: One Woman’s Journey Through Sexual Addiction by Sue William Silverman, 2001 The first popular memoir about a female sex addict, this book is organized around each of the author’s 28 days in a rehab center for sex, love and food addiction. As she participates in groups, individual therapy, and sexual recovery meetings, Silverman contemplates past sexual exploits and her first glimmers of hope that a life without sexual compulsion might actually be worth it.

Coming Off Love: A Memoir of Withdrawal from Sex and Love Addiction by Brigit Newman, 2014 Coming Off Love focuses on the author’s struggle with alcohol and love addiction, as revealed in the story of her relationship with a man over the course of the book. She writes with introspection this most personal topic. Newman reveals her affiliation with a specific 12-Step recovery fellowship, stating that this community saved her life. Like Love Sick, the story ends as the author is graduating from inpatient addiction rehabilitation.

No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction by Marnie C. Ferree and Mark Laaser, 2002, 2010 This is a groundbreaking Christian self-help book and study guide about female sex addiction, with a strong clinical voice woven throughout the author’s personal story. The author lends credibility to her clinical, educational perspective on sex addiction by admitting that she herself is a recovering sex addict. Many stories in this book are about clients the author has treated; her story is told primarily in the preface of the book.