‘Comedy Is Not Pretty’: Q & A with Curtis Sittenfeld

AS A TWENTY-SOMETHING feminist in the early-nineties recession, I hit the job-jackpot: Ms. magazine.

I’d grown up with the magazine. I’d internalized its references to back- alley abortions, men who “just don’t get it,” and workplace discrimination. The fact that nothing we published was by or about feminists of my generation or younger who’d grown up taking women’s rights for granted was, weirdly, not weird to me. One fateful editorial meeting, Barbara Findlen circulated “Your Life as a Girl . . .