In her first book, Shrill, Lindy West offers this memorable take on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland: ‘She is the perfect feminazi caricature: fat, loud, irrational, violent, overbearing, constantly hitting a hedgehog with a flamingo. Oh, shit. She taught me everything I know.’

A raucous, unflinching and hilarious feminist voice, Lindy West is best known for her writing in Jezebel and the Guardian – especially on body image and sexual violence. Seattle-based, West is also known for an unforgettable episode of the This American Life podcast in which she confronted, and received a sincere apology, from a man who had cruelly trolled her online in the guise of her deceased father.

Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman is a collection of first-person essays traversing the themes of fat-shaming, Twitter-trolling, racism, sexism and more. ‘Women are told, from birth, that it’s our job to be small: physically small, small in our presence, and small in our impact on the world,’ she writes. ‘… I want to obliterate that expectation.’

In conversation with Anne Summers.