TWC presents a FREE VIDEO CHAT about the craft of writing!
We’re joined by essayist Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn (A Fish Growing Lungs) to talk about her debut book, the craft of essay writing, and more. Alysia will be in conversation with Zach Powers, author of First Cosmic Velocity and Director of Communications at The Writer’s Center.
FREE and open to the public, all times Eastern. Limited space.
RSVP below, and you’ll receive an email on or before July 24 with instructions for joining the chat via our video conferencing platform, Zoom.
We encourage you to order a copy of the book directly from Burrow Press or from your local, independent bookseller.
About the Author
Alysia Sawchyn is a features editor for The Rumpus and currently lives in Northern Virginia. She splits her time between teaching professional writing and admin work, and you can often find her driving on the beltway. Follow her on Twitter @happiestwerther
About the Book
At age 18 Alysia Sawchyn was diagnosed with bipolar I. Seven years later she learned she had been misdiagnosed. A Fish Growing Lungs takes the form of linked essays that reflect on Sawchyn’s diagnosis and its unraveling, the process of withdrawal and recovery, and the search for identity as she emerges from a difficult past into a cautiously hopeful present.
Sawchyn captures the precariousness of life under the watchful eye of doctors, friends, and family, in which saying or doing the wrong thing could lead to involuntary confinement. This scrutiny is compounded
by the stigmas of mental illness and the societal expectations placed on the bodies of women and women of color. And yet, amid juggling medications, doubting her diagnosis, and struggling with addiction and cutting, there is also joy, friendship, love, and Slayer concerts.
Funny, intelligent, and unflinchingly honest, Sawchyn explores how we can come to know ourselves when our bodies betray us. Drawing from life experience, literature, music, medical journals, films, and recovery communities, each essay illuminates the richness of self-knowledge that comes from the act of writing itself.