Memoirs In The Attic: A Workshop In Honor of and with Thanks to Debra Shulkes

Madwomen in the Attic and Herstory Writers Network, in Memory of Debra Shulkes, Present:

Memoirs in the Attic

A Free Public Writing Workshop Held Virtually

Fridays, 1:30 – 3:30 PM EST

*Except on occasion, when the workshop day will be moved to held on a Monday night or Sunday afternoon, instead of on Friday, for those who cannot attend on Fridays

Beginning April 17th, 2026

A partnership between Madwomen in the Attic and Herstory Writers Network, Memoirs in the Attic is an ongoing, free-to-the-public weekly online memoir workshop offered in memory of and with thanks to Madwomen in the Attic member Debra Shulkes (1975-2022). The workshop invites people who have had personal experience with carceral mental healthcare systems and institutions or with psychiatric treatment and diagnoses to come together to craft memoirs from and through the walls of the proverbial attic. The workshop explores Mad counter-narrativity in and through the genre of memoir with those who identify as Mad, psychiatric survivors, psychiatric consumers, neurodivergent, or in other self-defining ways in relation to or rejection of psychiatric discourses and apparatuses. In the 2015 collection Madness, Distress, and the Politics of Disablement, the late human rights and psych survivor advocate Debra Shulkes put forth an intention of “imagining communities that value and fully respect the rights of people who experience madness and distress.”  This workshop aims to do just that by bridging the Herstory method with Mad feminist praxis in order to familiarize writers with Herstory storytelling methods of memoir-writing in a space that is Mad-affirming and that aims to be anti-carceral, anti-racist, human rights-driven, needs accommodating, differences-respecting, and caring. In Memoirs in the Attic, we shape stories that are personal-agenda-driven and that combat institutional violence, social injustice,  and discrimination through the power of Mad storytelling to change hearts, minds, and policies where consciousness, behavior, and our psychic, social, and bodily realities are concerned. We invite people affected by mental health systems, psychiatric diagnosis, social stigma, and psychiatric biomedical violence to use the power of their voice to do healing work, to share wisdom, to speak back to systems of power, to challenge harmful ideologies, and to create Mad-positive futurities. To register for this free virtual workshop, please send a message of inquiry to workshop facilitator Jessica Lowell Mason (she/her) at madwomenofwny@gmail.com,  including some information about yourself and your interest in the workshop.

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Emily Wu Truong

From Lady in Green to Psychiatric Survivor:
How 988 Shattered My Trust in the Mental Healthcare System

By Emily Wu Truong

For over a decade, I devoted my life to mental health advocacy. I believed in change — in compassion, in awareness, in recovery. My journey began with my local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), where I first found community when my family did not know how to be a support to me. Later, I connected with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH) and joined the California Mental Health Movement, back when it was still called Each Mind Matters.

As part of their campaign promoting the lime green ribbon for mental health awareness, I became known as the Lady in Green. They featured my story. I felt validated. I spent years fighting stigma, amplifying AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander) voices, delivering nearly 200 talks, and working within a system I believed could help people heal.

In 2022, when the national 988 crisis line launched, I called and texted the line to test it — to better understand what others in crisis might experience. A year later, I called again. But this time, it wasn’t a test.

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Mia Pandey Gordon

The Sea Balloon

Monday, 7.47am: Water, water.

My throat itched — not where it meets your tongue, but further down. Then, the itchiness started snaking up. When it reached my mouth, my head started swaying, back-n-forth, back-n-forth, like a beach ball at sea — buoyant on gentle waves, back-n-forth, back-n-forth.

The itchiness reared its head, making my mouth dry. I need water. I had water. Water all around, but none to quench the thirst. And all the while my head went back-n-forth, back-n-forth.

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Hearing Feminist Voices: Writing with Feminist Theorists MWC Workshop Series 1

Hearing Feminist Voices: Writing with Feminist Theorists, Series 1 (2026 – 2027)

In Hearing Feminist Voices: Writing with Feminist Theorists, we will write together in conversation with feminist theorists and consider how creative writing is a space for the making of Mad feminist theory. In this workshop series, we will write with feminist theory by hearing the voices of feminist theorists as a Mad feminist practice and by considering selected ideas from feminist theory as we write through theory and consider together how our writing practices are forms of and informed by feminist theory – ultimately, shaping feminist theories through our writing by hearing these voices,  calling them from the past to the present and into future. We will dive into writing our way through questions of selfhood, experience, suffering, strength, power, and joy by turning to feminist theorists and writing through fragments of their theoretical lenses, which can act as prompts and inspiration for us to think and write together. ‘Writing into theory’ is a practice feminist writers have been engaging in for more than a century. By hearing feminist voices, we will explore and write through the feminist theoretical constructs of writers such as bell hooks, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Sonia Sanchez, bell hooks, and others. In this Hearing Feminist Voices: Writing with Feminist Theorists series of workshops, we will write with some of the great feminist genre-changers, exploring what it means for a writer to create new knowledge by doing that very thing. The Mad Collective will be the first to experience and, therefore, to shape this workshop series, which will eventually be offered to others, in the form of workshops and courses. 

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Tiara Raven Marie Clover

Blood for Water: Hands

I could begin with how I often lay in bed thinking about the blood running down my arms while looking out at the flowers from my window. I could trace my laying out to the fact that we don’t talk about Jerry. Jerry, who supposedly was cleaning his gun in the laundry room and the gun went off.  I could talk about the ways the story changes over time from person to person.

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2025 December Letters Project

It’s that time of year: December Letters Project preparation time!

We invite you and/or your families, clubs, organizations, schools, and communities to be part of MITA’s – 2025 – December Letters Project. This is MITA’s annual local literacy project, but we encourage others to run a December Letters Project in their local communities if you’re not local to the greater western New York region.

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Lee Blackbird

Ode to my kidneys

Until recently, I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t think about you or worry about you. You were my unsung lifeline.

But now, you are showing signs of exhaustion. I feel you, nestled somewhere beneath my rib cage, one of you on each side, breaking a little bit more each day. I feel you, dying.

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