Will You Read This, Please?
Join Joanna Cannon, Catherine Cho, Sanmeet Kaur and Hannah Beckerman as they come together for Mental Health Awareness Week to discuss Will You Read This, Please? A frank and impactful collection of 12 stories as told to our best British writers, based on the lived experience of people who have faced mental illness in the UK.
Edited by Joanna herself, Will You Read This, Please? is a ground-breaking and unforgettable collection, shining a light on the stigma and isolation of living with mental illness, while also showing the strength and resilience of the human spirit.
Working in collaboration with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Joanna and The Borough Press took open submissions from mental health service users in the UK who wanted to tell their story.
These narratives traverse through a spectrum of mental health conditions rarely discussed in mainstream media, from postpartum psychosis to schizophrenia to harm OCD. Will You Read This, Please? amplifies voices often muted, offering a profound exploration into the intricacies of mental health.
Joanna Cannon’s first two novels, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things about Elsie were both Sunday Times bestsellers and Richard and Judy picks. She worked as a hospital doctor before specialising in psychiatry, and lives in the Peak District with her family and her dog.
Catherine Cho is the author of Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times' Young Writer of the Year Award and a NY Times' Editor's Choice. She is a literary agent and the founder of Paper Literary. She lives in London with her family.
Sanmeet Kaur is a writer from London, and has written for a number of publications including Stylist, Media Diversified, gal-dem magazine, Metro and inews. She is currently studying for her MA in History at University College London.
Hannah Beckerman is an author, journalist, broadcaster and event chair. She is the author of four novels including the Amazon bestseller If Only I Could Tell You and The Forgetting. She is a freelance features writer, book critic and pundit, and regularly interviews authors and celebrities at events.
If you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in this event, support is available and can be accessed via Mind which you can find more about here.
The ‘stream and book’ package includes a unique ticket for the stream, and a copy of Will You Read This, Plesae (RRP £14.99) deliverable to any UK or international address.
The event will initially be broadcast on 10 May at 6.30pm UK time. It will be available to view up to two weeks after the event has ended and can be accessed Worldwide. If you live in a time zone that does not suit the initial broadcast time you can watch it at any point after the initial showing for two weeks.
If you have any questions, please email [email protected]