Flying with Paper Wings

Sandy Jeffs was born in Ballarat in 1953. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1976, a time when recovery was seen as unlikely. She was in and out of institutional care for 15 years, including at the infamous Larundel Psychiatric Hospital. Sandy was among the first to start speaking publicly about living with a mental illness, and much of her writing - including eight volumes of poetry - has been about her struggle to live a full life. She is well-known as a community educator, speaking to doctors and psychiatrists, at community health centres, and educational institutions. She has been honoured in the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, Her Place Women’s Museum, and with an OAM in 2020. This new and updated edition of Flying with Paper Wings offers insights into madness – medical, social, personal – as well as disturbing reflections on its causes and its care. It is also a story of how poetry can become a personal saviour in the face of nearly irresistible forces.

Short-listed for The Age Book of the Year 2010 (Australia)

Read this exceptional book. It takes you beyond your own narrow terror towards something that might be called insight. —Helen Elliott, The Age (on the first edition)

Sandy Jeffs OAM was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1976 a time when recovery was seen as unlikely. She was in and out of institutional care for 15 years and has been an advocate for people with mental illness for many years. She is a prize-winning poet and the author of 8 collections including the bestselling collection, Poems from the Madhouse, Blood Relations The Wings of Angels: A Memoir of Madness, The Mad Poet's Tea Party and The Poetics of a Plague. Her non-fiction includes prize-winning books the memoir, Flying with Paper Wings and Out of the Madhouse (with Margaret Leggatt). Sandy Jeffs OAM was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1976 a time when recovery was seen as unlikely. She was in and out of institutional care for 15 years and has been an advocate for people with mental illness for many years. She is a prize-winning poet and the author of 8 collections including the bestselling collection, Poems from the Madhouse, Blood Relations The Wings of Angels: A Memoir of Madness, The Mad Poet's Tea Party and The Poetics of a Plague. Her non-fiction includes prize-winning books the memoir, Flying with Paper Wings and Out of the Madhouse (with Margaret Leggatt).

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