Female-authored memoirs to add to your reading list

Fluffy celebrity autobiographies featuring glossy photos and titillating anecdotes have fallen out of favour – these days high-profile women are writing manuals and manifestos, advising on how best to navigate modern womanhood.

Serious books for serious times? You bet. And we think that’s a good thing - if you’ve got a platform, why not use it for something worthwhile. Joining Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind Of Girl, Anna Kendrick’s Scrappy Little Nobody and Fearne Cotton’s Happy on the bookshelf is We: A Modern Manifesto For Women Everywhere by actress Gillian Anderson and journalist Jennifer Nadel. Published on 8 March to coincide with International Women’s Day, it’s a rallying call for change, which promises an antidote to ‘superwoman culture’. Where do we sign up?

Meanwhile, with chapters headed “My battle with perfection” and “Food as fuel, not punishment”, Hollywood actress Lily Collins really goes there with her strikingly honest essay collection, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me (out 7 March). Dealing with an often-absent rockstar dad (‘80s star Phil Collins), her eating disorders, dating men with addiction problems, feeling lonely despite accruing 4m Insta followers – it’s all here, and, despite her starry life, much of it will resonate with normal women.

Finally, here’s one for your younger sister or teenage friends - Open: A Toolkit For How Magic And Messed Up Life Can Be by Gemma Cairney (out 9 March). The DJ and broadcaster is warm and wise, as she cautions against getting obsessed with what ‘normal’ (normal families, normal sexuality, normal bodies, normal careers) looks like, urging women instead to embrace the unpredictably of life and plough their own furrow. Good advice, at any age.