Hi there. Rachel here: New Yorker, writer, publishing professional, and chronic workaholic. I’ve spent the past thirteen years of my life underemployed and overworked, trying to balance my creative pursuits with school, multiple jobs, and some semblance of a social life. This, of course, is a recipe for burnout.
How can I—as well as other artists—feel fulfilled without also getting overwhelmed? What can feed my writing beyond sitting in the chair and doing it? Is there something everyone else has figured out that I haven’t?
Now what. explores these questions and more. I’ll primarily focus on trying to have a life outside of my art; how downtime, community, and hobbies are just as important as work itself. From celebrating day-to-day wins to reflecting constructively on the lows, this is a space for figuring things out, one step at a time. I will also pick the brains of other creatives to see how they have succeeded (and occasionally failed) to answer these questions through their routines and habits. Let’s feel inspired together. ✨
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A formal bio (awkwardly in third person).
Rachel A.G. Gilman is a writer and the hostess of Wine and Pine: A Desirous Reading Series held monthly at Ten Degrees Bar in New York’s East Village. She graduated summa cum laude from NYU’s Gallatin School where she hosted the award-winning talk show The Write Stuff on WNYU-FM and founded The Rational Creature literary journal. She holds an MFA in Writing, Nonfiction from Columbia University (where she served as Editor-in-Chief of Columbia Journal Issue 58) and an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. Post-grad, Rachel has worked in book publishing at Oxford University Press, W. W. Norton, Grove Atlantic, and Feminist Press. She was the recipient of the Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholarship for Young Writers at the 2021 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference and an attendee of The Stinging Fly Summer School in 2023.
Rachel is currently at work on a rom-com about a recovering alcoholic chef and a divorced nurse who find love by way of a New York singles support group, as well as an experimental memoir-in-essays about the correlation between trauma and control in dating. Originally from one of the oldest stone house villages stateside, she now lives and writes primarily in Manhattan.
Let’s connect further.
Check in on my day-to-day via Instagram or Twitter. You can read most of my creative, published writing on my website. If you’re in the tristate area, you can also follow my reading series Wine and Pine to be in the know on upcoming events. I’d love to see you there!
Anything else, feel free to shoot me an email: rachelaggilman [at] gmail [dot] com
