We are pleased to announce a new fall release from Snowraven Books, an imprint of Blue Crow Publishing. Katie Rose Guest Pryal’s Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education will be released in print and eBook on October 16, 2017.
More 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
About the Author
Katie Rose Guest Pryal, JD, PhD, a former university professor, spent over a decade hiding her disability in academia. Although she worked as a disability studies scholar, she never discussed her own disability until after she’d left the academy. Only after leaving did she feel safe disclosing her own “broken brain.” Since 2014, she has written widely in outlets such as Chronicle Vitae, Women in Higher Education, and more on the topic of mental health, disability, and academia, establishing herself as a voice of wisdom and and compassion. For more about Katie, click here.
