A 50% Chance of Paralysis
Continue reading “Claire Jones”Claire Jones
Sara Hobler
The following poems are from Sara Hobler’s poetry collection, E=MC^2.
Holy Lunch
Chief complaints are boredom and back pain
And Hunger, puts the body under a strain
Hungry makes arthritis hard to ignore
They weren’t lying when they said it keeps the score of your life and mentality
Continue reading “Sara Hobler”Sofia Stremlin-Adams
Maed
At five years old I had an impressive resume: aspiring coven leader, professional frog wrangler, and avid Michael Jackson fan. Absent from my curious resume was the ability to spell my own name. Even though I would be repeating kindergarten in the fall as a result of my creative spelling, I was in no hurry to uncover what seemed like an impossible cipher.
Continue reading “Sofia Stremlin-Adams”Call for Submissions: MITA’s 2025-2026 Featured Writer Project
Madwomen in the Attic is seeking featured writers for The Featured Writer Project’s 2025-2026 writing year, which will begin in January 2025.
Open reading period: March 1 – June 30, 2024.
This is a non-competitive call for submissions, open to writers from any location across the globe; all who wish to be featured writers and who fulfill the submission guidelines will be included in this project and archive. MITA seeks to offer a space in which veteran writers write alongside novice writers as a form of literacy and advocacy to dismantle stigma and support gender-marginalized people affected by the mental health system, trauma, and stigma. The project features women and other gender-marginalized writers and artists who have been affected by the mental health system, psychiatric diagnostic or other mad-related stigmatizing labels, trauma, or forms of societal oppression that have been othering or alienating.
Continue reading “Call for Submissions: MITA’s 2025-2026 Featured Writer Project”Sanai Sudlow
The Role of Eroticism
Last year being called erotic would have been something I would run fast away from. The most exciting part is I do not know why. Maybe I would run in fear that I would be perceived as overly promiscuous. Perhaps I would run because that placed me in another alternative society category. Maybe I would just not want to be that kind of woman. Labeling myself as erotic, in the past, felt like throwing myself into a room of undesirable women and locking the door. I was terrified of being someone no longer desired by a specific demographic I unintentionally tried to remain desirable to. At the time, I didn’t know the world’s true meaning.
Continue reading “Sanai Sudlow”Shahrzad Sajadi
Safe is Halfway Across the World
“Otaghet boo adam gerefte” (your room smells like human). This is a classic Ariana expression meaning your room is getting stuffy. Before I can sit up on the bed, she walks to the back of the bedroom and opens the room’s only tiny window. “And clean this mess, will you?” pointing to the bedroom floor. We go back and forth between English and Persian.
Continue reading “Shahrzad Sajadi”Kara Pernicano
Fighting a blessing:
It’s okay to need
your security blanket.
It’s okay to need
a crutch.
Continue reading “Kara Pernicano”Articulate Heart
The Love of This Heart Once Chosen
Life has a funny way of bringing up things long buried or lost at sea. Material or memory, there are feelings, moments, loves, and losses that make the best and worst of us. Rarely named, they are often our most unspoken truths.
Continue reading “Articulate Heart”Shouting Through the Walls: Memoirs of Psychiatric Incarceration
This workshop pilot invites people who have experienced involuntary institutionalization or had carceral experiences within psychiatry and the mental health system to participate in a series of four memoir-writing workshops on the subject of psychiatric incarceration. Historically, the bodies and voices of those who have experienced institutionalization have been restrained, contained, and silenced. During the workshop series, we will aim to make our voices heard through the proverbial and literal walls of the institution by shaping memoirs about psychiatric incarceration that aim to dismantle social stigma, pathologization, and criminalization by writing agenda-driven narratives that evoke understanding and empathy, in an effort to reclaim autonomy over our bodies and selves and amplify our voices.
Continue reading “Shouting Through the Walls: Memoirs of Psychiatric Incarceration”Jacquese Armstrong
In Walked Mania by Another Name… (and It wasn’t Bud)
I always told myself, “If I could just finish college.” Then, “If I could just move.” And then finally, “If I could just find a job in my major and work.” The voices would stop then. But they didn’t. I finally had to admit to myself this was a for-real lifelong struggle. I wasn’t ready to handle that, and death was my contingency plan.
Continue reading “Jacquese Armstrong”
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