Shades of Blue Writers on Depression, Suicide, and Feeling Blue

by Ferris, Amy

• ISBN13: 9781580055956
• ISBN10: 1580055958
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-09-29
• Publisher: Seal Press

Summary

The silent epidemic of depression affects millions of people and takes dozens of lives everyday, while our culture grapples with a stigma against open discussion of mental health issues. Editor Amy Ferris has collected these stories to illuminate the truth behind that stigma and offer compassion, solidarity, and hope for all those who have struggled with depression. 

Contributors to Shades of Blue include: Barbara Abercrombie, Sherry Amatenstein, Regina Anavy, Chloe Caldwell, Jimmy Camp, Debra LoGuercio DeAngelo, Marika Rosenthal Delan, Hollye Dexter, Beverly Donofrio, Beth Bornstein Dunnington, Matt Ebert, Betsy Graziani Fasbinder, Zoe FitzGerald Carter, Pam L. Houston, David Lacy, Patti Linsky, Mark S. King, Caroline Leavitt, Karen Lynch, Lira Maywood, C.O. Moed, Mark Morgan, Linda Joy Myers, Christine Kehl O’Hagan, Jennifer Pastiloff, Ruth Pennebaker, Angela M. Giles Patel, Alexa Rosalsky, Elizabeth Rosner, Kathryn Rountree, Kitty Sheehan, Jenna Stone, judywhite, and Samantha White. 

Shades of Blue brings the conversation around depression and sadness into the open with real, first-hand accounts of depression and mental health issues, offering empathy to all those who have been affected by these issues. It’s time to scream out loud against this silent annihilator: We are not alone.

Author Biography

Amy Ferris is an author, editor, screenwriter and playwright. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney: Confessions From a Midlife Crisis was adapted into an off-Broadway show in 2012. She has contributed to numerous anthologies, including He Said What, The Buddha Next Door, The Drinking Diaries, Exit Laughing, and the upcoming anthology, Faith (2015). She co-edited the anthology Dancing at the Shame Prom (2012). She has written everything from young adult novels (A Greater Goode), to films (Funny Valentines and Mr. Wonderful) to television series. She has also been both an Editor-in-chief, and contributing editor/writer at the magazines Urban Refugee and Milford Magazine, and contributes regularly to iPinion Syndicate, The BroadSide, and The Manifest-Station. Her blog, Marrying George Clooney, is extremely popular. Her daily morning posts, THIS IS WHAT I KNOW THIS MORNING, POST COFFEE, PRE WINE, are now followed (and shared) by a couple of thousand folks a day, and have reached goddess status on Facebook.

Ferris serves on the Executive Board of Directors at Pages & Places Literary Festival in Scranton, PA, Peters Valley School of Craft in Sussex, New Jersey, and serves on the Advisory Board of The Women's Media Center. She is on faculty at The San Miguel de Allende Writers' Festival, and is a visiting teacher at the UCLA Writers Workshop (extension). She co-founded and co-created (along with Jody Feagan and Katie Rountree) WOMEN OF OUR WORDS/HERShops (WOOW - a monthly writing workshop). Her number one goal, desire, and dream is for ALL women to awaken to their greatness, their beauty, and their power. She believes in miracles and magic, and that we should all - each of us - wear of scars like stardust.