A Bipolar Love Story is live on YouTube‘s VYP channel! I am rewarded for all my bad work with the once-in-a-lifetime exclusive opportunity to interview a living legend: JACKIE CHAN is on the podcast!!! No, I am not making this up!!!! She works in banking and has bipolar disorder!!!!! Oh.
Tag: Mental Health
The Apostrophe Issue 2 – MIND
Issue 2 of the Hong Kong Writers Circle‘s literary magazine The Apostrophe on the theme of ‘MIND‘ is live on Substack! Congratulations to the published writers and artists, including Rebecca Dandridge-Walker, Julian Pantz and Kasra Shroff! Submissions for Issue 3 close on Halloween 2023. The theme is ‘Mistake’ but this is a trick! The only mistake you can make is not entering!
More Than A Label
Happy to be taking part in Mind HK‘s anti-stigma campaign More Than A Label‘s first anniversary event; ‘More Than A Label: I Was, I Am, I Will Be‘, an exhibition of art, poetry and letters by Mind HK ambassadors aimed at de-stigmatising mental health, which will be open to the public Nov 21 – Nov 28. The exhibition will be held at 5, Sun Fung Mansion, 52-60 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central, Hong Kong Nov 21-28. More details soon!
Some of my previous ‘rants’ about mental health!
https://themighty.com/topic/bipolar-disorder/mania-bipolar-disorder-sleepwalking
Matched!
I am bouncing off satellites to have been ‘matched’ as a mentor with dynamo of positive energy Eny Bawse by the Resolve Foundation! I met Eny for the first time this week and will be mentoring her on her journey with Resolve’s 2022 fellowship program and her incredible Self Love Cupid project. When that’s over, I am really hoping Eny will mentor me!
Hong Kong State of Mind
Excited to be an ambassador for mental health charity Mind HK! Thanks to Odile, Vicki and the rest of the team for the encouragement and opportunity to train and swap stories with so many inspiring people!
Resolved!
Thanks to the Resolve Foundation for inviting me to be a mentor on their 2022 Fellowship Program! This year’s theme is Wellbeing Reimagined. Excited to find out who my mentee will be and meet the other mentors!
Proverse Autumn Reception Nov 18!
I had a blast attending Proverse Publishing‘s Autumn Reception at the Helena May last Thursday, mixing and mingling with the winners and finalists of the 2021 Proverse Poetry Prize! Congrats to all and to Proverse for organizing such a fun event! I’m also excited to be interviewing a couple of them for my next series of Mental Ideas, which will broadcast in 2022. S2 explores the relationship between mental health and imagination in a psychedelic way! First up is the incredible Vishal Nanda, who blew me away with his lively speech and inspired poetry book Please Stand Back From The Platform Door. Vishal is a fellow ‘bipolar bear’ (as he signed his book to me), but I’m certain that’s the least interesting thing about him. He is donating ticket sales from his upcoming book launch on Dec 8 to mental health charity Mind. Don’t miss it!!!
Transference surpasses more Mental Milestones!
Transference keeps on keeping on surpassing mental milestones: the indie feature film I helped co-produce (through Mental Ideas) is fast approaching 3.7M views on YouTube! Thanks to everyone who has watched and supported it! Had we charged a cent a view, we’d have actually broken even! But of course the film’s purpose was to raise awareness of important mental health issues, not to make money (as I continue to console Raff…🤣 🤣 🤣)
Can’t WAIT to see Raff‘s latest ingenious film Little Boxes, shot entirely on Zoom in lockdown! It’s racking up an impressive array of awards nominations, despite still being in post-production! Congrats Raff, producers Lee Boardman (my old flatmate in London billions of light years ago!), his gorgeous wife Jennifer James and the talented group of actors they train and mentor at their Manchester-based acting school/ company Actor Tribe who star in the film!
I’m hoping to catch up with Raff and Lee for a chat (on Zoom – ironically…) about the film on S2 of Mental Ideas on RTHK Radio 3! You can watch Lee playing Arron Banks in Brexit: An Uncivil War on HBO in Hong Kong now!
Breakfast with CBAA Australia!
Excited to have been invited to perform an episode of my RTHK humour column Sharp Pains on Australian radio network CBAA‘s Breakfast Show. I’ll also be chatting to the show’s presenters about fighting mental health challenges with humor. Big thanks to CBAA‘s Abe Killian for inviting me! We’ve not fixed a date yet so keep checking this space for details of how you can tune in live or download it as a podcast!
Sharp Pains has been running on RTHK Radio 3’s 123 Show for A YEAR!!! Some episodes have been published by the South China Morning Post and inspired a collection of short stories for two anthologies. The first, After the Storm, is set to be published by the Hong Kong Writers Circle and launched at the 2021 Hong Kong International Literary Festival Nov 12.
Catch me on VYP Oct 18!
War of Voices will be on the Voice Your Passion poetry channel on YouTube Oct 18! Thanks to Dr. Ahmed Elbeshlawy for inviting me to read and for sending me his latest poetry book, Unappeasable Ghosts. Looking forward to interviewing Ahmed for Mental Ideas soon!
You can listen to me reading War of Voices for VYP below and buy the poetry anthology in which the poem was first published here!