Janice Erlbaum | Author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir - Writing

get the odd email

older work

A selection of published and unpublished work from years past.

Front cover of spiral notebook reading APRIL 1995

girl bomb diaries

My Preoccupation With Blackhead Extraction Videos as Understood in Various Personal, Social, and Spiritual Contexts

How I Knew You Were Lying

Old hand-drawn flyer advertising a high school toga party

When In Rome

Protest sign reading LIAR RACIST FRAUD COWARD RESIST IMPEACH

Kumbaya, Motherfucker

Black and white photo of a young boy reading a newspaper in a bathtub, fully clothed

This One Is Just Right (The Rumpus)

A screenshot from an online article with the header "The Intersectionality of Being an Asshole"

Confessions Of A (Former) White Savior (Thought Catalog)

Photo of the front of the Utopia Diner in New York City, where Janice and friends went in 1985

Utopia (Lumina Magazine)

Janice holds up both hands, giving the "thumbs down" on one side and the "thumbs up" on the other side.

It Happened to Me: I Was an Adult Thumb Sucker (xoJane)

Beck Bennet from SNL wearing a feminist t-shirt

The Creepist (Nerve.com)

Photo of Janice at KGB bar, March 10, 2008

The Other Sestina (The Best American Poetry Blog)

Egg Heart (Nerve.com)

The Temp (McSweeney’s)

Humorous flyer referencing the song Someone Left the Cake Out in the rain

Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain (NYPress)

Motivational poster featuring man in sunrise shadow holding up a fist

Ways I Can Change My Life (NYPress)

Watching Him Fuck Her (BUST)

15. “My mother is dead, again.”

I gave up on writing about my mother after MY MOTHER IS CRAZY was rejected in 2010. I wrote two other books instead — a novel for adults, and a novel for tweens.

14b. The Monotonous, Grinding Mechanics of Long-Term Talk Therapy: A Partial Summary, Part Two

For the seventeen years I worked with Judith, I thought therapy was like school. You put in the hours to master the concepts, and then you passed the test. Once you learned some

14a. The Monotonous, Grinding Mechanics of Long-Term Talk Therapy: A Partial Summary, Part One

My therapist Judith and I argued for years over her calling my mother “psychotic.” My mother, I maintained, was a fucked-up person, but she wasn’t psychotic. Judith nev