Taking a pause
Dear feminist friends,
Feminist Book Society is taking a break 📚
We’re doing our best to challenge all those narratives we swallowed and accidentally lived our WHOLE LIVES by. You know the ones – work hard, work harder, do more, be more, achieve more, repeat.
We’re choosing to look after ourselves and each other, and to embrace the concept of radical rest. It’s been a tough year for both of us. We encourage you to down tools for a bit and have a think about it too…
Eleanor here: ‘On a personal note: I’m not gonna lie, my hand has been somewhat forced – I am fourteen months into a debilitating illness that has, at times, literally floored me. It impacts my ability to move, to think, to work, to leave the house, to make choices about how I live my life, to spend time with or even speak to my loved ones and to plan ahead.
One day, when I can (and if anyone’s interested!) I am going to write more about it – not least because it disproportionately affects women and research has been – unsurprisingly – patchy; because learning to live with it has shone a cold light on just how many toxic patriarchal and ableist narratives still drive so much suffering, and also because insisting we matter and taking care of ourselves (in my personal experience, and far, far beyond) turns out to be yet another exhausting political act … But right now, I am still learning to rest.’
Our passion and commitment to you, our fabulous feminist community, to our authors and publishers, partners and collaborators has not dimmed.
Our intention is to quietly give ourselves the time and nourishment we both need and to come back stronger (if you know, you know; if you don’t, click HERE!)
For now, rest well. We’ll see you next year.
Eleanor and Rosie: Team Feminist Book Society xx
❤️
Recommendations (from Rosie…)
Here are some excellent books, articles, and corners of the internet that have helped inform my / our decision to take a break:
Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create a Better World by Amber Massie-Blomfield
Radical Rest: Notes on Burnout, Healing and Hopeful Futures by Evie Muir
The Success Myth: Letting Go of Having it All by Emma Gannon
Poor Little Sick Girls: A Love Letter to Unacceptable Women by FBS alumnus Ione Gamble
Educator and leader in the cultural sector, Kate Oliver on the importance of ‘Radical Rest for the Cultural Sector’
Finally, Nick Cave’s newsletter The Red Hand Files has just turned six, and he has collated the many hundreds of his reader responses to his own question: ‘Where or how do you find joy?’ (Perhaps he was inspired by our last FBS event?)