S1 E12: Poetry & Personas That Heal with Madeleine Blair

When We're Not Hustling: Sex Workers Talking About Everything But

This episode of When We’re Not Hustling is an invitation into the writer’s room: an intimate space to process anything and everything through the written word. Whether she is writing about sex work or topics unrelated, Madeleine Blair makes sense of the world through expertly crafted essays, vivacious poetry, and all other written creations.

In this episode, Madeleine sits down with host and fellow writer Jessie Sage to talk about writing. They discuss the upcoming anthology The Holy Hour: An Anthology of Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine, in which both of their work appear.

Jessie and Madeleine know that to be a writer, one has to be a reader, so they swap opinions on different authors who also have sex work experience, including Melissa Febos and Margo Steines. They dive into the difficulty of balancing writing about sex work and writing about other topics, as well as balancing a sex work persona. Madeleine shares her current works in progress from her poetry collection to her nonfiction project to her unruly sestina transformed into a book-length letter to her ex-boyfriends about Morgellons Disease and Joni Mitchell. And on top of all this, she even reads a poem for us.

Madeleine Blair is a sex worker, writer, freelance editor, writing coach, and the founder and host of Sex Worker Writes, a hookers-only virtual literary salon.

Guest Recommendations:

Book:

The Courage to Create by Rollo May

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LaGuin

People:

Guest: Madeleine Blair

Host: Jessie Sage

Producer: Emily Foster

Intern: Anna Fischer

Music: Benjamin J Benamati

Sponsor: Assembly Four

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