Post Grad: Five Women and Their First Year Out of College

“Intimate, compulsively readable and even occasionally shocking.” — Chicago Tribune

“The creativity and courage at the foundation of these stories is worth a thousand hours of counseling in any college career office.” — Melissa Harris-Perry, author of Sister Citizen

An honest and deeply reported account of five women and the opportunities and frustrations they face in the year following their graduation from an elite university

When she graduated from Princeton in the spring of 2014, Caroline Kitchener began shadowing four of her female classmates, interviewing them as they started to navigate the murky waters of post-collegiate life. Weaving together her own experience as a writer with that of these other women— a documentarian, a singer, a programmer, and an aspiring doctor—Kitchener delves deeply into what is offered to a female college graduate, and how the world perceives them. The five confront challenges ranging from parental estrangement to mental illness, financial anxiety and heartbreak, all the while tackling their nascent careers and forging their own paths forward.

Writing with the fervor of a journalist, the rigor of a sociologist, and the nuance and empathy of a skilled memoirist, Kitchener has crafted a brilliant work of reportage replete with vibrant, human characters. Both a broad and an intensely individual exploration, Post Grad is an account of the generation people can’t stop talking about, from one of its own.