Forthcoming in 2026 from University of Massachusetts Press
“Rendered in gorgeous language, Woman House: Essays and Assemblages traces the sometimes-fraught relationship between the narrator and her mother, amplified by the pandemic. Each of these essays reveals what it means to live inside a woman’s body, through illness and aging and sexual violence. A collection that is both deeply thoughtful and deeply personal, Woman House imagines a way forward, even when our bodies and our memories fail.”
— Laura Furlan, 2025 Juniper Prize Contest Judge
Part memoir, part critical sense-making, part reckoning with family, identity, illness, addiction, art, and inheritance, the essays in Woman House recontextualize the female body—in danger, in pleasure, in portraiture, in proximity, and in resistance. Through these gorgeous pieces, Westerfield challenges the structures that silence and restrict female expression as she plumbs the depths of a mother/daughter bond and uncovers pain and violence in the past as well as resilience and beauty in the present.
