Privacy

Sabbatical is a private club for women. This page says plainly what we hold about you, why, and what you can ask us to do with it. It is written to be read rather than to be survived.

Who we are. The Art of Sabbatical LLC, at theartofsabbatical.com. For anything on this page, write to us and a person will answer.

What we hold, and why

If you join the waitlist — your email address, and if you seal the founding offer, your name, birthday, city, country, what you do, what you would do with a month, and how you found us. We hold it to keep your place in order, to honour the offer to your name, and to write to you when there is something worth saying.

If you apply — your name, email, where you are, and your seven answers. Those answers are read by a committee of members, in full, by people rather than machines. We hold them to decide, and to remember why we decided.

If you write to the house — your name, your email and your letter.

If you are a member — your name, email, the date you joined, your standing, your access key, whether your membership is paid up, the essays you have kept, the invitations you have answered, and any note a keeper has written about you. Notes are a record of a conversation, not a judgement, and you may ask to see every note we hold about you.

When anyone visits — the page, where they arrived from, and whether the device was a phone. We do not use cookies to follow you, we do not run advertising, and we do not sell or share anything with anyone.

What we never do

We do not sell your information. We do not share it with advertisers. We do not use it to train anything. Members may not sell to members, and that applies to us as well: we will not use what you tell us to market to you beyond the letters this page describes.

The essay archive is private and unindexed. What is written there is written in confidence by verified members, and it is not for quotation, indexing, or any use outside this house.

Who can see it

Applications, letters and the roll are read by the women who run the house and, for applications, by the committee. Access to the studio is protected by a key and a second lock. A record is kept of who opened what and when.

How long we keep it

Applications and letters are kept while you are being considered and for as long as the record is useful to the house — a woman held rather than refused is read again at the next reading, and the writing is hers to build on. If you would rather it were removed sooner, say so and it will be.

Member records are kept while you are a member and for a year after, so a lapsed membership can be picked up where it left off. Traffic records are kept in a rolling log and are not tied to a name.

What you can ask for

You can ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to stop writing to you, or object to how we are using it. Write to us and a person will do it. If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Union, these are your rights under the UK GDPR and the GDPR, and you may also complain to your data protection authority.

There is a tick box on the waitlist for whether we may write to you, and a keeper can mark you as not to be written to at any time, at your word.

Where it lives

The site and everything on it are held on Cloudflare's network. Letters are sent through Resend. Both process data on our behalf and under contract; neither is permitted to use it for anything else. Some of that processing happens outside the country you live in, under the standard contractual clauses.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, members will be told rather than left to notice.