“I picked up The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang on a whim last year, finished it in about two days and then went right back to the beginning and read it again (which I never do!)  There is a line in it where she says, “I write this while experiencing a strain of psychosis called Cotard’s delusion in which the patient believes that they are dead.” I gasped and took screenshots to send to my husband because it was the first time I’d seen something similar to what I’d experienced postpartum.  At the time I thought – this is why I wrote Because I'm Not Myself, You See!  So that others might have the same gasp of recognition …”

“Woman of Substances by Jenny Valentish was recommended to me by a friend years ago when I was putting my proposal together for this book. It’s one I returned to many times when I was struggling to weave the personal aspects of my story with the research and clinical elements. She does it so well!”

“A bookseller at my local told me to watch out for This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright which was released last year as she’d read and loved the ARC. It’s a memoir of Recovery and Renewal and is just so beautifully written – intelligent and poetic and full of references to literature and art. Of recovery she writes: ‘There are peaks and troughs, no linear path, you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.’ The same is true for writing difficult books …”

“I first read Susan Johnson’s memoir A Better Woman, when my son was about two. I was still quite unwell and only just starting to be able to read again. The memoir is about Susan’s own postpartum health issues and was the book that made me realise I had to tell my story as memoir and not try to fictionalise it. It’s one I returned to while writing Because I'm Not Myself, You See when I needed the courage to keep writing the gritty truth. Having her endorse Because I'm Not Myself, You See was the most special full circle moment for me.”