The Madwoman in the Attic
(for Sue)
I am the madwoman in the attic.
A psychic cancer dwells deep in me
and I am unable to control its preying tentacles
which creep and crawl through my mind’s dark passages.
Continue reading “Sandy Jeffs”Sandy Jeffs
Maria Guarino
A New Holiday Outfit
Thanksgiving is tomorrow and none of my clothes fit me. After eight years of being together, my partner and I took that big step and finally moved in together, bringing our clothes, furniture, cat, and love to a cozy one-bedroom apartment in Astoria. Cozy is the key word here- the apartment is nestled on the main street of a bustling but quaint area of Queens, catering to both his need for quiet, and also my desires for things to do and people to see. For the past few months, we have been busy at work, making it “home” deciding whose couch fit best (his- no question), what types of curtains to purchase (I wanted delicate lace, but compromised for something a little more sturdy and private), and constantly battling and making up over things like how to clean the kitchen, where to put the litter box, and how much space my art supplies should occupy. (We almost did not recover when he threw out a seemingly random piece of paper, which was, in reality, a treasured piece of ephemera that I sought to re-purpose later. Of course, once I discovered that it was gone, it was my most treasured piece of scrap paper ever).
Continue reading “Maria Guarino”Joan McNerney
Tumbling
through time as
I lay thinking always
remembering
how this crap shoot of life
crushed my dreams spinning
me into an unlikely comedy
Continue reading “Joan McNerney”H.R. Gordon
Excerpt from the work-in-progress manuscript The Hollow and the Light
I could imagine a million gardens and libraries—perfect places that held magic in the air. But the beast still loomed.
Continue reading “H.R. Gordon”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.
Continue reading “Memoirs In The Attic: A Workshop In Honor of and with Thanks to Debra Shulkes”Gabriella Garofalo
To M.
Any chance, you heavenly vault?
No, only blue souls at night,
And wastrels gone wild,
Such a deep indigo waste
Where wolves play foul with light
Continue reading “Gabriella Garofalo”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.
Continue reading “Tiara Raven Marie Clover”Arianna Taylor
Mary
I stopped believing in Omma’s God the day she covered herself in plastic wrap. When I was younger, Dad used to pick me up from middle school around three in the afternoon, his poorly hidden shooter bottles laying across the floor of the backseat. His breath was hot and his cadence mean—I did not talk to Dad, then. We only yelled. Screamed loud enough until one of us cried—who would break first? Me, knowing this, and him, desperate to drink, would both coalesce rather simply to the idea of dropping me off at Omma’s after school, leaving him to do God knows what with the drug dealers that lived further down on Fulton. Just seven houses down and he’d get his fix. Only had to figure out what to do with me, first. The only issue was that Omma, at that time, had fallen quite far off of the wagon. In fact, I recall thinking that a wagon wasn’t high enough. That it would make more sense to say she fell off a very high trampoline, or a cliffside, perhaps a telephone pole or even heaven. Gracefulness never had less of a place than with her during my sixth, seventh and eighth grade school years.
Continue reading “Arianna Taylor”Nancy Jensen
The Room
I am alone in the Room. It has dirty old orange shag carpet on the floor and no furniture except a trash can. The windows are boarded up so you can only see treetops and sky at the top. On the other side of the Room are French doors, also all boarded up. A person standing on the other side of the French doors would not be able to tell that there is a Room beyond those doors. In the Room a light bulb hangs down from a cord, but the control switch to turn the light on or off is not in the Room.
Continue reading “Nancy Jensen”Fanney Björk Ingólfsdóttir
Fragments of a Story
1.
It‘s hard for me to describe my surroundings. Maybe because I just keep looking down at my hands or maybe because the tears are blurring my vision. I can clearly make out my mother’s voice. How stern it is, rough as always when she is giving someone a piece of her mind. But at the same time there is a tremble in it now, a nervous vibration that I have not heard before. Almost as if the sternness is breakable, at the verge of shattering at any moment.
Continue reading “Fanney Björk Ingólfsdóttir”
