Take Home Reading: Katerina Bryant

The Wheeler Centre

Take Home Reading is a new short-form audio series for readers and writers – shining a spotlight on Australian writers with recently released books. In each instalment, you’ll be introduced to a writer, learn a little about what they’ve been reading lately, and hear a short reading from their latest work.

In this episode we’re talking to Katerina Bryant about her debut memoir Hysteria, a compassionate and insightful account of illness, strength and women’s stories.

‘We’re told that illness has a narrative structure, and that it ends. We're told that illness is a tragedy that is, or should, be overcome. I was trying to fit my own narrative within that structure, and it wasn't fitting. And through the act of writing, I was able to see how much of a trope that was and how, really, the experience of living with chronic mental illness like I do is not the difficult part. The difficult part is finding how to live within a world that doesn't accommodate that, and doesn't believe that it's ongoing.’

Hysteria is out now through NewSouth books.

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