Sweet Success! Kathy Brandt and Max Maddox

Prepared By Shannon Lawrence


Walks on the Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness (ISBN 978-0-9891414-0-6, trade paperback and e-book, 180 pages), a memoir by Kathy Brandt and Max Maddox, was released in April 2013 by Monkshood Press. It is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble online. Kathy Brandt blogs about writing and mental health issues at www.kathybrandtauthor.com. Kathy Brandt and Max Maddox will sign and discuss Walks on the Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness Sunday, July 14, 3:00 to 5:00 PM, on the patio at Rico's (Poor Richard's), 322 N. Tejon, in Colorado Springs.

A mother salvages her son’s poetry from a mental hospital garbage can. For her, Max’s verse is a reminder of her son’s promise and a souvenir along the footpath of bipolar disorder. It’s the whiz kid and his vexed mother.  His emotional unrest and her gentle compassion.  In Walks on the Margins, mother and son weave two narratives into a single compelling story of what it means to suffer from mental illness. 

Max takes us under the seas of psychosis as Kathy narrates her struggle to decode her son’s disease in a world beset by institutional failure. She strives to piece together a semblance of her son as Max takes another walk to the margins and into the melancholic abyss.

A finalist for the Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction, Walks on the Margins is a fiercely candid story about the emotional turmoil and confusion of those who struggle with bipolar disorder.

 

 

Kathy Brandt is a published author who taught writing at the University of Colorado for ten years.  After her son, Max, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she became active in mental health issues.  She was on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Colorado Springs (NAMI-CS) for six years, and served as President.  In 2012 she received the NAMI National Award for her outstanding service to the organization.  She is currently the NAMI-CS liaison to the Mental Health Court in Colorado Springs. Kathy has published four novels with the Penguin Group.  She has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Rhetoric. She lives in the mountains of Colorado.

 

Max Maddox has a BA in philosophy from Grinnell College and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, where he was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Award and received the Fellowship Trust Award. He has exhibited his work in galleries including The Slought Foundation, The Print Center of Philadelphia, and the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum. He was the preparator, photographer, and curator at the Sun King Gallery and Pyramid Museum in Philadelphia and also assistant to artist and curator Richard Torchia, Director of Arcadia University Gallery.  He now lives in Colorado where he teaches and continues to pursue his career in art.

To submit information for your own Sweet Success post, email DeAnna Knippling at dknippling[at]gmail[dot]com.