Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emily Duffy . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Emily , thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout
I found myself approaching burnout a couple of years ago when I was deeply entrenched in teaching and studies. I was doing way too much– teaching three university classes and taking four as a doctoral student. I felt the exhaustion and despair literally starting to change my brain. Even though I knew that my exhaustion wasn’t a personal failing, it was hard not to internalize some of the messages that hustle culture teaches us. I thought, wow, I must be lazy or not working hard enough if things feel this difficult. Academia is rife with long hours and little pay, and the culture instills a strong sense of martyrdom– it almost becomes a competition of who is working harder and suffering more. Left unchecked, this can become very toxic.
I had to make a decision to prioritize my mental and physical health: I quit teaching. I went through a mourning period, because there were aspects of teaching that I really loved, and I was also terrified of what this could mean for my future and career prospects. But I realized that there would be no prize waiting for me at the end of my suffering if I’d just “sucked it up.” and kept going.
I read somewhere recently that the antidote to burnout isn’t just passive rest, but actually populating our time with things that connect us to people and activities that inspire us and fill our cups.
This has definitely proven to be true. It was hard to see it at the time because of how under-resourced I was, but quitting was actually the best decision I could have made for myself. It gave me the mental space to focus on my creative projects: my poetry book and my research, and it opened the doors for amazing collaborators and co-conspirators to enter my life. Recently, I co-founded a small press with an amazing collaborator, and I’m working on co-editing an anthology. It’s amazing how my hours of labor feel so different when they are dedicated to projects that align with my values. Instead of feeling depleted and filled with dread by my work, I’m inspired and galvanized by a project that challenges me to put my skills into practice.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a Lisbon-based poet, author of Hemorrhaging Want & Water (Perennial Press 2023), and co-founder of Working Girls Press alongside Molly B. Simmons. We are an independent publisher focusing on publishing, supporting, and promoting the art and writing of current and former sex workers. As a press, we are committed to collaborative and collectivist publishing practices. Our debut anthology, The Holy Hour, was successfully funded through Kickstarter and is forthcoming Spring of 2024! We had 220 backers and exceeded our initial goal, which enables us to do a larger first print run.
The Holy Hour: An Anthology of Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine is a collection of poems, essays, fiction, and visual art by 45 contributors. To date, so few sex worker anthologies have been printed and distributed in the United States. The Holy Hour is the first of its kind, focusing on magic and the divine. Within the past twenty years, there have been an increasing number but still just a handful of anthologies of creative work by sex workers. This project finds its place within an emergent and powerful canon of sex worker art and writing. From sublime images and reflections on devotion to liturgies for survival and interpretations of confessional spaces, the book is alive with work considering the liminal, holy, and magical dimensions of erotic labor.
During the summer of 2023, over phone calls, voice notes, and collaborative documents, Molly and I crafted a call for submission we hoped would resonate with our community. We received an overwhelmingly positive response. An echoing sentiment was, “I’ve been waiting for something like this.” Writers who had been keeping stories close to their chest, waiting for the opportune time to develop and share. Photographers who played with iconography, entering into visual conversation with confessional spaces and places of worship as a form of transmutation, play, and research. Poets who used their stanzas as places to explore the painful and sublime dimensions of labor, devotion, and craft. We really feel that this topic is timely, expansive, and nuanced.
We are so excited to release this anthology that vivisects an ongoing conversation about the place of sex work in culture and society, and questions what consider taboo, what we hold sacred and holy.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Don’t fail to pursue an idea or a dream because someone else it doing it. Trust your inner compass and your desire. Find people to collaborate with you. DIY is a spirit I love and live by, but it’s also kind of a misnomer, because we can’t do anything by ourselves.
Three qualities that have been most impactful along my journey:
– An obsession with languages: this has enabled me to listen deeply to texts and learn how to write, edit, and translate.
– Defiance of authority, incessant bureaucracy, and rigid rules (this has hindered me at times too!)
– Humility: I am in a constant process of checking my own ego and trying to make sure that I’m not operating from a place of hubris or self-righteousness. I seek out experiences that challenge what I think I know to be true about the world.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Yes! If you are a bookstore or library interested in stocking The Holy Hour: An Anthology of Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine, please reach out! Likewise, if you are an event space or organization interested in collaborating on an event, we would love to hear from you.
If you are a writer or journalist interested in writing a review of our anthology, please email us at workinggirlspress [at] gmail.com; we would be happy to provide you with a digital-format ARC for review purposes.
And lastly, while we are not open for general submissions yet, we will be putting out a call for manuscripts later this year! We will be seeking written, visual, and multimedia work from current and former sex workers who are practiced in their creative craft. This doesn’t mean you need a degree like an MFA or a long list of prior publications or exhibitions! It just means that, whatever your creative practice, you’ve been working at refining it and are at a place where you are ready to share your work with a broader audience. We are especially passionate about publishing work that resists simple categorization and disrupts binary stories of empowerment or trauma that fall into a common media narrative about sex workers. Other than that, we encourage experimentation with form, genre-blending work, and art in a variety of mediums. Follow us on social media to learn more about our press and stay tuned for our future calls!
Contact Info:
- Website: workinggirlspress.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workinggirlspress
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/workinggirlspub
Image Credits
Inês da Cruz Oliveira Penelope Dario
