‘Diary of a Bipolar Explorer’ – a memoir by Professor Lucy Newlyn

Ninety-five people – family, friends, colleagues and students – met in the Doctorow Hall on 27 February for the launch of a new book Diary of a Bipolar Explorer, by Professor Lucy Newlyn (Emeritus Fellow and former tutor in English). Written in the first few months of Lucy’s retirement, this fifteen-year memoir explores what it is like to be bipolar, aiming to de-stigmatise the condition by writing openly and candidly for a general audience.

The book describes Lucy’s struggles with bereavement, family life and the workplace, as well as such things as depression, mania, psychosis, PTSD, and various forms of short-term addiction. It also celebrates the creativity which is often associated with bipolarity, and in her case with her own emergence as a poet. At the launch, Lucy was interviewed for about an hour by Dr Neil Vickers, Reader in English Literature and Medical Humanities at King’s College London, and read some of the poems and prose from her book. She describes the experience as “warm and cathartic”.

On Tuesday 13 March, Lucy was interviewed on BBC Radio Oxford. You can listen to her here, at 1:10 in the Kat Orman show, talking about the experience of a psychotic episode associated with her father’s death. She will also be interviewed at the Oxford Literary Festival by Jem Poster on Friday 23 March at midday (find further information and buy a ticket here).

Lucy has several other talks lined up for the coming months, including one in the College’s Doctorow Hall (5:30-7:00 p.m on Thursday 10 May) at which she will be interviewed Richard Lawes, Consultant Psychiatrist to Oxford University’s Counselling Service. This event will be open to the whole university.

All royalties from sales of Diary of a Bipolar Explorer will be donated to the mental charity MIND. The book can be purchased at Amazon, or direct from the publishers, Signal Books.