Many of the essays in this issue of Wordgathering center around mental health. Maya Augelli’s essay starts things off with an essay written for World Mental Health Day on depression, anxiety, and the fear of rejection. Liesl Jobson’s essay deconstructs her prize-winning poem “Angels, the Voices,” describing her experience with mental health and medication in South Africa that led to the poem’s composition. In a more scholarly vein, Elizabeth Dahab, translating from French, explores the themes of madness and alienation in a novel by Canadian-Lebanese writer Abla Farhoud. Like Jobson and Dahab’s essay, Jonathan Mack’s off-beat essay “Paragraphism” (Series 2) involves literary concerns, arguing for the paragraph as the most serious art form for many disabled people. Likewise, Shannon Cassidy argues for the relevance of apocalyptic literature for people who have chronic illness and face volcanic changes in health. Ed White’s personal essay of a disabled man trying to rescue a drowning woman reads like fiction. The final essay comes from Rachel Lieberman who describes work with Cow Tipping Press to encourage Autistic writers and writers with intellectual disabilities, and offers samples of the work accomplished.
- Maya Augelli – Wanting to Be Enough
- Liesl Jobson – Listening to Voices
- Elizabeth Dahab – Poetics of Madness and Alienation in a Francophone Canadian Novel
- Jonathan Mack – Paragraphism – Series 2
- Shannon Cassidy – Apocalypse Me
- Ed White – Rescue
- Cow Tipping Press – From the Best of Cow Tipping Press
Wordgathering is open to work that makes a contribution to disability literature. Writers interested in submitting essays for publication consideration should first send a query to wordgathering@syr.edu describing the proposed piece and how it relates to disability literature. Please submit work only after receiving editorial confirmation regarding submission(s). For more information, please visit our Submission Guidelines.