Acknowledgments

Thanks first of all to my always amazing and often magical agent Victoria Hobbs, who’s been with me from the beginning, gets smarter every year, and is a constant friend as well as being the best representative anyone could wish for. Thanks also to Jessica Lee, Alexandra McNicoll, Prema Raj, and Tabatha Leggett at A. M. Heath for all their stellar work.

Thanks to all the remarkable professionals who worked on this book at Granta in the UK and Grove in the US: first of all to my genius editors Peter Blackstock, Anne Meadows, and Rowan Cope, who dealt with an often baffling and wayward project with sensitivity and acuity, and exceeded all reasonable expectations by finding solutions I could not see. I’m also constantly grateful for my publicists, Lamorna Elmer and Kait Astrella, both for their outstanding work in getting The Men out and finding it friends in an uncaring world, and for always being fun to be around through the often trying work of promoting a book. Thanks also to Jason Arthur for his many contributions to the project, and to Emily Burns for her constant support and great work. At Grove, thanks also to Morgan Entrekin, Deb Seager, Judy Hottensen, Julia Berner-Tobin, Sal Destro, John Mark Boling, Deb Seager, Gretchen Mergenthaler, Henry Sene Yee, Nancy Tan, and Alicia Burns; and at Granta, additional thanks to Jason Arthur, Sarah Wasley, Arneaux, Simon Heafield, Dan Bird, Bella Lacey, Christine Lo, Noel Murphy, Phoebe Llanwarne, George Stamp, Pru Rowlandson, and Sigrid Rausing. The world of writers is full of horror stories, so I’m reminded every day how fortunate I am to be working with such brilliant and dedicated people.

Thanks to friends who were early readers: Lauren Hough, David Burr Gerrard, Tim Paulson, and Catherine Nichols, for their enthusiasm and often life-saving advice. Every single thing anyone likes about the book is their doing and the errors are mine.

Thanks to the friends who gave me places to stay and work while I was writing this book, with or without cats, frogs, lizards, etc. to keep me busy: Ellen Tarlow, Gina Guy, Jim Gottier & Andrea Ball, Arlene Heyman, Clare McHugh, Peggy Reynolds, and Mandy Keifetz. I feel an urge to thank the cats now too but honestly I don’t want to thank the frogs.

Thanks to all the online friends who were my daily company while I wrote this book, and who got me through the bleakest days of 2020, especially the members of Small Twitter and the Echo Biosphere, but also my infinitely extended Twitter family. And thanks to Anita for being the wise, smart, generous IRL friend I needed in the worst moments.

Thanks to writers of feminist utopias who came before, especially Joanna Russ, Alice Sheldon, and Sherri Tepper, women brave enough to say, unapologetically, in a far more patriarchal world, that there should be no men. Their work made a crucial difference to me long before I ever thought of writing this book.

And thanks always to Howard, for reading every version of this book and being my first editor, literary collaborator, best friend, husband, boyfriend, thing that is there when nothing else is there, voice of reason, companion in unreason, home, favorite sweater, boat, water on which that boat is floating, multitudinous fish beneath, abyssal depths, have I left anything out?