Happy Pub Day to Katie Rose Guest Pryal and Life of the Mind Interrupted

It’s a double Poppy release day!! Earlier we celebrated with Amy Impellizzeri on the release of her latest, The Truth About Thea. Now let’s give a big Poppy cheer for Katie Rose Guest Pryal and her non-fiction release, Life of the Mind Interrupted.

About the book …

Academia isn’t an easy place to be if your brain isn’t quite right. Colleagues carelessly call each other “schizo” and “bipolar.” Another colleague is fired—easy enough to do these days, when most college teachers no longer have tenure—for “instability.” In these ways and many more, psychiatrically disabled people working in higher education are reminded every day that their privilege, their very livelihoods, can be stripped away by the groundless suspicions of others. Their lives can be, in an instant, interrupted.

The essays in this book cover topics such as disclosure of disabilities, accommodations and accessibility, how to be a good abled friend to a disabled person, the trigger warnings debate, and more. Written for a popular audience, for those with disabilities and for those who want to learn more about living a disabled life, Life of the Mind Interrupted aims to make higher education, and the rest of our society, more humane.

Praise for LIFE OF THE MIND INTERRUPTED …

Katie Rose Guest Pryal is one of the foremost writers of disability and the higher education we have today. Like Kay Redfield Jamison and Elyn Saks, Pryal pulls aside the curtain to look at what academic life is like for someone with a mental disability. With unmatched legal insight into the intersection of disability and university life, Pryal’s writing is also accessible. Reading her writing is like sitting down to coffee with a friend. Covering vital topics such as disclosure, collegiality, and accommodations, Life of the Mind Interrupted helps academics and friends of academics navigate the thickets of higher education, where expectations of “sound mind” are cruelly at odds with the reality of disability. In Pryal’s work we see hope: For a kinder, more just, more capacious understanding of what it means to be human, to pursue knowledge, and to educate. —Catherine J. Prendergast, Ph.D., Professor of Disability Studies

Buy now.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., is a novelist, freelance journalist, and erstwhile law professor in Chapel Hill, NC. She is the author of the Entanglement Series, which includes ENTANGLEMENT, LOVE AND ENTROPY, and CHASING CHAOS, all from Velvet Morning Press. As a journalist, Katie contributes regularly to QUARTZ, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, THE (late, lamented) TOAST, DAME MAGAZINE, and more. She earned her master’s degree in creative writing from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, where she attended on a fellowship. She teaches creative writing through Duke University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and leads the Village Writers Workshops of Chapel Hill. She also works as a writing coach and developmental editor when she’s not writing her next book.