Emotional Support Editor
An introduction and an answer to "what are you gonna do with THAT degree?"
Virgo season really is my time. Not only do I get to celebrate my birthday (I’m now playing with a full deck), but I also get to be mindful of the shift of the seasons, the start of the Jewish new year, the start of the academic new year, and what it all really means. I embrace it as a celebration of meditation and reflection.
As I look back on this year, I am grateful beyond words for my clients. The topics that writers who work with me have been outstanding — environmental justice, community mutual aid, love in personal and global tragedies, Black student activism, HBCUs and higher education, civil rights and governmental attempts to thwart and deny them. I work mostly (but not exclusively) with academics so I get to wade through juicy footnotes as well as break up six-line sentences for greater readability. And it’s work I absolutely love because it plays on work I’ve been doing for 20 years now (I don’t understand this new math because it can’t possibly be that long!).
I don’t know that I ever really introduced myself, so here goes. I’m originally from Alabama, where I pursued my undergraduate (Roll Tide!) With a MA from the University of Memphis, where my advisor Janann Sherman and the Center for Research on Women gave me space to dig deeper into southern women’s history, feminist theory and praxis, and oral history, I rolled up to THE Ohio State University. There, I earned a Ph.D. in comparative women’s history. And while there, I lived in a feminist cocoon of intellectual curiosity and depth, so much so that when I took my first academic job, I was stunned that most academics don’t identify or operate as feminists. Even many people in women’s/gender/sexuality studies departments operate in masculinist ways that uphold, or at least don’t challenge, white supremacy and classism. My naïveté is not lost on me, but I realize that in posing the question “did women change the academy or did the academy change women,” I know that the answer is actually “both” — but the practice is far too often the latter. I learned in painful ways that intersectional feminist practice is something that is to be studied and applied to people outside of the academy; turning a feminist lens onto the institution itself is never met with positivity.
Whenever people ask me about the trials of grad school, I laugh. Not because it isn’t an important question, but rather, because I’m not the one to ask. I went to grad school on a full fellowship coupled with a research assistantship and a position as managing editor at the Journal of Women’s History. When I was frustrated with my dissertation, I penned a prospectus for a collection of essays on the coalitions feminists built during the 1970s, which became Feminist Coalitions. When I wasn’t working on my dissertation (which I later revised and published as Groundswell), I was in Key West at the 801 Cabaret because my advisor, Leila Rupp, was co-writing a book about drag queens and/or I was sending manuscripts out for review, compiling issues, copyediting, reading page proofs, and coordinating publication schedules for three to four issues at any given time. (If you’re still hung up on the fact that I was getting paid actual money to go to a drag bar and spend time with drag queens, believe me, so was I.)
Although Key West holds my heart, editing is my passion. My work as managing editor of JWH really drew me into the beauty of words and sentences. It also gave me fangirl experiences — feminist historians are my Wonder Women! Gerda Lerner even called me at my home one day to talk to me for over 40 minutes about a single comma (we finally concluded that my suggestion was acceptable). When I approached then-editor Leila Rupp about a republishing of Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality” (aka “Comp Het”), we worked to make it happen. Several scholars responded to what “Comp Het” meant to them in their research, and Rich offered a final response. Rich sent me a personal note thanking me for allowing her the space to find “closure” on what was a lightning rod in the cultural sex wars of the 1980s as well as on her own “vexed history” with it.
I draw on past experiences as managing editor (visiting) for Signs and Meridians; member of editorial collectives for Feminist Studies and The Feminist Wire; special issue editor for Sexualities (co-edited with Eileen Boris and Rhacel Parreñas on sexual labors) and Oral History Review (Listening to and Learning from LGBTQ Lives); and visiting editor-in-chief for Oral History Review. Learning the nuances of academic publishing has allowed me to pull back the curtain of mystery that shrouds academic publishing. Making clear what is opaque with respect to publishing is something I do well for clients.
Some days, I’m an emotional support editor.
Clients might hit a mental block in their writing or feel so frustrated by a dissertation committee that they have lost the joy that brought them to their research in the first place. My job, then, is to listen. Sometimes, we go back to the developmental stage and draw out the themes and thesis in a new light. Or we pull out one section or chapter and mine it, word for word, to get the backstory of writing and, with time, rediscover the joy of the research. I might offer a cheer up with a silly TikTok (or even a serious one) or a playlist inspired by their research. But often I seek to understand and let clients know that while their path is unique to them, they are not alone. Writing, especially academic writing, is often isolating and lonely. It’s a commitment I make to clients and one I take seriously. And in this way, I may have left academia — a decision I do not regret at all — but I’m still connected to it through the clients whose work comes to my inbox. And when clients choose to work with me, they know that I’ve been through the process as writer, editor, balancer of teaching/writing/service, and giver of emotional support that is often lacking in academic settings.
I also help clients move from idea —> manuscript draft —> polished draft —> press —> page proofs —> book. And once the book is ready for preorder, I promote the shit out of it. If you follow Formore Editorial Services on social media (and please do), you’ll see Anastasia Curwood’s forthcoming biography of Shirley Chisholm often.
I’m booking speaking engagements for Curwood for spring 2023 and her calendar is filling up!! If YOU want her to come to your campus, community, or company to talk about Chisholm’s pathbreaking work in building coalitions, developing Black feminist power politics, and doing the work of intersectionality that Kimberlé Crenshaw theorized, click here and let us get you on her calendar.
Well, enough about me. Tell me about you! Let’s work together to get your writing goals met!
And when things get tough and you need a lift to get back to the work, remember:
XO, Stephanie