The Write Stuff: July Westhale on Living in a Palace and Not Having a Boss

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

July Westhale is a Pushcart-nominated poet, activist, and journalist. She has been awarded residencies from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Tomales Bay, Napa Valley, Tin House and Bread Loaf. Her poetry has most recently been published in Adrienne, burntdistrict, Eleven Eleven, WordRiot, 580 Split, Quarterly West, and PRISM International. Her poetry can also be found in Women Write Resistance, and Contemporary Queer Poetry. She was recently nominated as a Best New Poet for 2012 and 2013, an AWP Intro Award, and a Creative Writing Fulbright.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them... ?

I tell them I work as a journalist & freelance writer, piecing together income.

What's your biggest struggle -- work or otherwise?

My biggest struggle is upholding my own boundaries -- that manifests as the inability to say "no" to work that may or may not be serving my best interests, saying "no" to spending my time in ways that could possibly be harmful to me. But I'm working on it!