The Book

Chasing Misery is an anthology of essays collecting different experiences, perspectives and voices of women involved in humanitarian work and it’s now available for purchase!

For the paperback, click here. If you’re looking for it on Amazon.com for either a paperback or Kindle version click here.

While there are no good statistics on how many women are currently doing aid work there are some amazing, strong, talented, vulnerable, sophisticated, and intelligent women who have some fascinating stories to tell. Not the stories you get on CNN, or BBC, or Al Jazeera – where you are only given a minute’s glimpse into some of the most difficult places on earth – but rather complex stories with a very human face and whole lot of heart. This book is a platform for those stories.

This book will not answer all the question or debates about humanitarian aid work – in fact, it might start a few more – but it will provide a deeper insight into the complex world of humanitarian responses through the eyes of  those who are on the front lines. We’re have a very human book – some of the essays are funny, some of the essays are heart-breaking. Cause that’s how life is.

The name for the anthology comes from a conversation that the Head of the Editorial Team, Kelsey Hoppe, had while in Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami in which hundreds of thousands of people died and so many more lost their homes, families and livelihoods. After a long day, she was sitting on the roof of a house with a friend, tired, sad and thought ‘what a strange life this is, what a strange profession – ‘chasing human misery’ around the world as we go from one emergency response to the next.