Stephanie Heit

she/her/hers

Primary Genres: Poems, essays, movement as a form of writing

What do you like about writing -- or why do you yourself like to write? 

When writing first came into the foreground of my life, it was as a life preserver. I’d been intensely training to be a professional dancer when depression disrupted that trajectory. I’d always written, with poetry often an intrinsic part of my choreography, but now writing entered as a way to keep moving when my physical body couldn’t – to sculpt the space of the page, to choreograph leaps through verbs.

As far as the “why,” as a disabled person, as someone who identifies around mental health difference and more specifically bipolar, I need to be creative and adaptable to switch disciplines dependent on my energy, concentration, capacity. Sometimes that means writing. Other times, I’m not able to read or write. For me, leading a creative life doesn’t always mean production but rather an artful way of being in the world.

What might you like people to know about you as a writer?

I’m the author of PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press), an award-winning book of hybrid memoir poems, which invites readers inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of care. My first poetry collection is The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System, free pdf download through the press’ open access library or at Ypsi library), which explores the seams of language, movement, and mental health difference.

You can read more about Stephanie and her writing by clicking this link.