The Writers of Wales Database

FOWLER, RUTH

Website: www.ruthfowler.co.uk 

Born in 1979, Ruth grew up in North Wales. She was awarded a first class BA (Hons) in English Literature from Cambridge University in 2000 and then taught in Buenos Aires and India. After a year she returned to King’s College, Cambridge to complete an MPhil. However, realising that she would rather be living life than reading about it, she finished her thesis on Bollywood films within six months and went to live in Nepal.

After Nepal, Ruth travelled extensively from Argentina to the Alps, earning money as a writing, teacher, sailor, cook and begger. In January 2005 she found herself in New York, penniless and without a visa. Ruth started working as a stripper, first in Manhattan and then London. Her book, No Man’s Land - about " the murky territory where eroticism and commerce collide" - started as a blog (’Mimi in New York’) and was published by Viking in June 2008.

Ruth currently lives in New York and has written for The Village Voice, Wired, The Guardian, New Woman Magazine and The Observer. She has appeared in The Observer, Fashion Week Daily, The New York Times, The Sun, Jossip, Gawker, Page Six, ABC News and other publications across the world. Ruth is currently writing her second book, teaching ashtanga yoga and working on several screenplays.

Selected Publications:
No Man’s Land (Viking, 2008)

Contributed to:
The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 1 (contributor) (Northern Anthologies, 2007)
Book of the Body (contributor) (Observer Books, 2008)



No Man’s Land (Viking, 2008)

First song, dress on…

“It sounds like an obvious statement when I say that girls don’t grow up wanting to be strippers, but you’d be surprised. Most people – civilians that is – seem to think that even in the cradle we were wrapping ourselves around a greasy pole and grinding our hips to Britney Spears.…When we get drunk the regrets come out. ‘I’m a good girl, really I am,’ sighs one. She takes a drag of her cigarette and I think to myself, I’m not a good girl. Not really. Not anymore. But I sure as hell would like to be.”

With forty-three countries, twelve boats, dozens of flights, a fistful of “life experience” behind her and a lot of ambition fueling her dreams, twenty-five-year old Ruth Fowler arrives in New York City. A Brit with a Cambridge degree and a middle-class background, she doesn’t think it will be too hard to start a new life. But getting a work visa in post-9/11 U.S.A. proves to be tricky, and to kick-start a writing career, Fowler starts documenting her experiences. She funds her efforts with cash-in-hand jobs and a stint writing for The Village Voice, but it doesn’t take long for funds and hope to run out – sending her to the heart of Manhattan’s dark underbelly, the strip clubs and “Champagne Rooms” of Times Square. As “Mimi,” she has a chance of survival. But when this persona threatens to consume every vestige of Fowler’s identity, when her life spirals out of control and her true self remains so deeply buried that it seems impossible to resurrect, relying on “Mimi” seems like the biggest mistake she has ever made. No Man’s Land is a shocking, raw account about losing identity—and finding it again.

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