Join us in welcoming Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias, to The Second Shelf. Esmé will perform a reading before joining A N Devers in discussion about the work. This will be followed by a short audience Q & A.

'Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford and the literary world, she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror that 'spread like blood', or convinced that she was dead, or that her friends were robots, or spiders were eating holes in her brain. What happens when your whole conception of yourself is turned upside down? When you're aware of what is occurring to you, but unable to do anything about it?'

Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of the New York Times-bestselling memoir The Collected Schizophrenias and the novel The Border of Paradise, which was one of NPR's Best Books of 2016. She received a 2018 Whiting Award, was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017, and was the recipient of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize in 2016. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents, Esmé lives in San Francisco, and can be found at esmewang.com and on Twitter @esmewang.

£5 or £14 with discounted book.

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