Author and teacher Chloé Caldwell never queried agents or publishers when she finished her second book, Women, a 127-page novella based on Caldwell’s personal experience. The book, which Caldwell started when she was 27, shadows the narrator through her first relationship with a woman who is already in a relationship, and then follows her as she grapples with the breakup.
Caldwell published her first book, Legs Get Led Astray, with Future Tense Books, in 2012. “I guarantee you no bigger [publisher] would have taken [Women] at the time,” says Caldwell. Rather than pursuing the traditional path to publishing, she “sort of convinced Elizabeth to publish it on her small press,” says Caldwell of her friend Elizabeth Ellen, who runs the small press Short Flight/Long Drive.
Luckily, Ellen agreed and Women was first published in October of 2014, less than a year after Caldwell started writing it. Ellen “printed probably 500 copies, maybe less, and that was that,” says Caldwell. Except that definitely was not that.
It delighted Caldwell to see her words printed, but Women’s publication didn’t offer the dream experience we often see in TV or movies. Women touched on Chloé’s story—one that she “had never talked to anybody about. I hadn’t worked through my feelings of queerness. I didn’t have any community,” Caldwell says. At the time, Caldwell, who lived at home and worked at her father’s instrument and lessons store, also struggled financially. “I felt like a loser all the time,” Caldwell says.
Her dream future as a writer felt anything but certain. She’d never attended college or received a MFA. “It was sort of a crazy notion that I thought I could publish a book or be a writer. People didn’t see that in me.”
Caldwell’s work, however, didn’t go unnoticed, slowly accruing devoted followers. Lena Dunham shared the book’s galley on Instagram, tweeted about it, discussed it in interviews, and included it in her favorite book roundups. Kristen Stewart was photographed holding the book and Elle Macpherson and Emily Ratajkowski praised it. Women appeared on The L Word: Generation Q and Sex in the City and was included in book lists in various publications like The Guardian, Electric Literature, Vogue, and Autostraddle.
Even with that attention, in 2018, the novella went out of print. But the demand didn’t stop. “It just turned into a book that people, for whatever reason, passed to each other,” says Caldwell. She would occasionally receive emails from readers who couldn’t find a copy. Although there was still a U.K. version in print, readers complained about shipping costs and a preference for the U.S. cover.
When Caldwell found her third, and what she refers to as her “finally happy ending,” agent, Rebecca Gradinger, in 2023, Caldwell mentioned that she wanted to get Women printed again. Gradinger immediately got on board. At first the two approached an indie publisher and then the big publishers, with Caldwell eventually choosing Harper Perennial, which republished the book in August of this year—10 years after its original publication. The second publication of Women is a national bestseller.
“I know this is a one-time thing, and most people never ever get it,” Caldwell says of the book’s republication. When asked what she’s learned from the book’s trajectory, Caldwell says: “Following the thing that wants to be written and really standing by the genre and the story and the vision that you have for something.”
She admits that in prior years, she dismissed or put the novella down to herself for various reasons, like the book’s short length or its publication by a small press, but she’ll never do that again. More than anything else, she’s enjoying the process. “Writing is actually the biggest luxury you could have,” she says. Most days, Caldwell wakes up, makes coffee at home, turns on Spotify, and does what she loves: writes.
Lucky for readers, Caldwell’s stories are there for us. “Women has become a book universally known by those who need it, often discovered when needed most,” writes Katie Heaney in the foreword of the second edition. This summer, Caldwell’s fifth book, Trying, will be published by Graywolf Press. The book touches on “writing and teaching, disenfranchised grief, divorce, money, ambiguous loss, unexplained infertility, impasse, queer reawakening, and family,” according to Caldwell.
“It’s really wild…all of my decisions that looked irresponsible, bad, or stupid actually ended up being wise.”
Chloe Caldwell Images By Colleen Trainor
