New Book from University of California Press

An Academic Life Worth Living

How to Write, Publish, and Build a Career with Joy and Meaning

A clear, practical, and honest guide to building a successful academic career without sacrificing your health, family, creativity, or sense of purpose.

By Tanya Maria Golash-Boza

An Academic Life Worth Living offers concrete strategies for writing, publishing, and sustaining a meaningful scholarly career. Drawing on decades of experience as a scholar, teacher, mentor, parent, and academic leader, Tanya Maria Golash-Boza demystifies academic labor while confronting the structural pressures that make burnout feel inevitable.

Publication Date: January 2027

Publisher: University of California Press

Price: $21.95 / £18.99

ISBN: 9780520432345

Pages: 304

Available formats: Hardcover, paperback, and eBook

Order from UC Press Request an Exam or Desk Copy

About the Book

Your guide to a successful academic career that centers joy and avoids burnout.

Academic life is often imagined as a straight path: publish, earn tenure, keep producing. But the reality is far messier. We build careers while caring for children and elders, navigating institutions, responding to rejection, making hard choices, and trying to protect the parts of ourselves that make the work meaningful.

In An Academic Life Worth Living, I draw on my own experiences moving across continents and career stages while raising three children and building a scholarly life. I blend personal stories—from fieldwork and family life to tenure reviews and leadership roles—with practical strategies for writing, publishing, and making intentional career decisions.

This book is for graduate students, faculty, academic parents, first-generation scholars, and anyone who has wondered whether it is possible to do serious intellectual work without giving up health, family, joy, or purpose.

The answer is yes. But it requires more than productivity tips. It requires learning how to protect your attention, align your days with your vision, write consistently, publish strategically, share your ideas beyond the academy, and build a career that reflects what matters most to you.

This book is built around one central promise: thriving as a scholar is not about squeezing every minute out of every day. Meaningful work requires a life that nourishes you.

Who This Book Is For

An Academic Life Worth Living is written for scholars who want to do meaningful work and build sustainable lives. It will be especially useful for:

Graduate students imagining an academic life that feels possible
Assistant professors trying to write, publish, teach, and prepare for tenure without burning out
Academic parents balancing caregiving and career demands
First-generation scholars navigating the hidden curriculum of academic life
Mid-career faculty asking what comes after tenure
Scholars who want to write and publish more consistently
Anyone seeking a more joyful, intentional, and sustainable academic career

What You Will Learn

This is a practical book. It offers tools, examples, and strategies you can apply immediately to your own academic life.

Cultivate creativity as an academic writer

Learn how unplugging, nature, mindfulness, sleep, movement, and reading support serious intellectual work.

Align your days with your vision

Clarify what kind of academic life you are trying to build and make sure your calendar reflects what matters most.

Build a sustainable writing practice

Develop realistic habits for writing regularly, revising with purpose, and staying connected to your projects.

Publish with confidence

Understand how to publish journal articles and books, navigate feedback, target journals and presses, and move projects forward.

Build a career with joy and meaning

Make intentional decisions about public scholarship, career stages, tenure, leadership, and the life you want to live alongside your work.

Advance Praise

“Engaging, captivating, and a pleasure to read. This book is full of indispensable insider knowledge for successfully navigating academia as an early-career scholar, dismantling the ‘hidden curriculum’ of junior faculty life. Tanya Golash-Boza has a gift for distilling the most valuable methods from her own professional and personal life and rendering them legible across a vast range of disciplines and fields. While reading, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me that?’”

—Miroslava Chávez-Garcia, coauthor of Is Grad School for Me? Demystifying the Application Process for First-Gen BIPOC Students

“Golash-Boza delivers actionable strategies in an empathetic, collegial voice—warm but authoritative, thoughtful but pragmatic, and always anticipating readers’ concerns. This is a unique guide to building a sustainable and joyful working life, and every academic needs it on their bookshelf now more than ever.”

—Yasmin Moll, author of The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt

Introduction: Choosing the Long Road
Cultivating Creativity as an Academic Writer
Aligning Your Days with Your Vision
Writing Anywhere, Writing Every Day
Writing and Revising with Purpose
Publishing Journal Articles with Confidence
Publishing Books: The Long Game
Sharing Ideas Beyond the Ivory Tower
Thriving at Every Stage of Your Career
Charting Your Own Path to Tenure and Beyond
Conclusion: Taking the Long Road to the Sacred Valley

Also includes a Note on Generative AI, Recommended Further Reading, Works Cited, and Index.

About the Author

Tanya Maria Golash-Boza is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced; Executive Director of the University of California Washington Center; and author of six previous books. She has spent her career writing, publishing, mentoring scholars, leading academic programs, and helping academics build careers that are productive, meaningful, and sustainable.