She left home at 16 after passing the GED, moved to Boston, and worked at an assortment of jobs including as a boatyard hand and as a chambermaid.
[3] Febos is the author of Whip Smart (St Martin's Press 2010), a memoir of her work as a professional dominatrix while she was studying at The New School.
[12] Describing Girlhood, The New York Times wrote, "The aim of this book, though, is not simply to tell about her own life, but to listen to the pulses of many others’...This solidarity puts “Girlhood” in a feminist canon that includes Febos’s idol, Adrienne Rich, and Maggie Nelson’s theory-minded masterpieces: smart, radical company, and not ordinary at all.
[14] Febos was the co-curator, with Rebecca Keith, of the monthly Mixer Reading and Music series on the Lower East Side for ten years.
Her essays have won awards from Prairie Schooner and StoryQuarterly, and for five years she was on the Board of Directors of Vida: Women in Literary Arts.
[16] Febos currently works as a Full Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.