I didn't expect that $100 and the power of fifty words would overwhelm The Awakenings Review.
The story goes this way: Dr. Patrick Corrigan and I were kicking around the idea of establishing a literary magazine by mental health consumers in the fall of 1999. By then we had several year's experience with publishing a professional journal, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills, here at The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at the University of Chicago. Finding funds to print The Awakenings Review was a looming problem-and still is-but that year we were awarded a start-up gift by a large corporation (that chooses to remain anonymous.) With printing costs for the first issue abated, I turned my attention to the task of finding a stream of submissions for our new journal. Where, I thought, would we find proficient and passionate writers who had experienced mental illnesses, who were willing to put their literature 'out there' under the inscription of "psychiatric," "consumer," "ex-patient," or "family member?"
Pat Corrigan put me in touch with a friend of his, Margaret Szumowski, an English teacher and literary arts aficionado from Massachusetts. "Poets & Writers Magazine," she said. "That's where the market is." That's exactly where we went. We placed the smallest ad possible in their classifieds--fifty words for $100--ran it for a single issue, and within a mere two months we were deluged with submissions. If this sounds like a testimonial for the New York-based Poets & Writers, it may well be.
Ironically, success was not entirely good. We were swamped. I could hardly keep up with the interest. How on earth were we going to cull the works of so many authors? The stack of submissions nearly filled two boxes! And, as you'll see as you read this issue, they were very good. All of them, even those we turned down, merited being published. After a lot of ridiculously difficult decisions, the editorial board of The Awakenings Review selected thirty-four writers for this, our second issue. The overall statistics are impressive: we received works from 170 writers from 27 different states, and one from New Zealand. We tapped only one in five writers for publication.
But it's not my purpose to self-congratulate The Awakenings Review for it's good fortune. Instead, it is my intent to point out the fact that there are a great number of creative and gifted writers in this nation who live with mental illnesses--or know someone who lives with a mental illness--who search in vain for an outlet for their creativity. Our contributors have told me that mainstream literary journals are unlikely to publish works that directly refer to mental illnesses. Stigma? I once was researching a article for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills (Summer 1998), when I ran across this bit of information in an essay by N. C. Andreasen in The American Journal of Psychiatry. Andreasen studied thirty writers at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Fully 80% had had some kind of affective disorder in their lifetime, compared to 25% of the general population. If you can extrapolate this figure to the readership of Poets & Writers, then you can understand why a publication like The Awakenings Review is so desirable.
You'll see in this issue that we've decided to publish more work by family members of people with mental illnesses-sons, daughters, siblings, etc. Some of the work was so impressive that we couldn't turn it down. Furthermore, we remind ourselves that mental health organizations made up of family members have been criticized for excluding consumers. We didn't want to practice reverse discrimination.
Again, I'd like to thank Dr. Patrick Corrigan for his support and mentoring of The Awakenings Review, and Dr. Elliot Gershon, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, for his insight and support. David P. Korajczyk in the Office of Medical Development at The University of Chicago Medical Center has lent us much of his time in the search for funding. Thanks, too, to Barbara Blaser for her goodwill and broad support of The Awakenings Project. I shouldn't forget to mention Irene O'Neill-Sam and her five years of commitment to the Project. Special thanks to The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of DuPage County in Illinois for their gift that helped make this printing possible.
There are many people to recognize for their involvement in the editorial process of this journal. Lisa Morehead offered her ever-present goodwill and proof-reading skills. And thank you, Joanne Gruber, for your humor and dazzling editing. I'd like to acknowledge Jean Hiltz for patiently keying in all these pages from behind a computer screen. Paul McComas, Wendy Liles, Veronica Jean, Bill Clark, Virginia Goldrick, Ben Beyerlein, Garth House, Margaret Giesecke, Gabe Mitchell, James Secor, Wanda Washko, Vi Orr and Joan Rizzo volunteered many hours to read, criticize and select the authors we have published here. We appreciate Vicki Barker, host of World Update on the BBC's World Service, and Victoria Lautman at WBEZ-FM in Chicago, for their help in promoting The Awakenings Review and telling our story.
And finally, we offer many thanks to you, our readers and subscribers.
Robert Lundin: Editor