{"id":4386,"date":"2021-07-22T16:47:49","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T06:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=4386"},"modified":"2021-07-22T16:47:49","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T06:17:49","slug":"wakefield-press-roz-bellamy-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2021\/07\/wakefield-press-roz-bellamy-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Wakefield Press acquires Roz Bellamy\u2019s memoir about mental illness, queerness and Jewish identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wakefield<\/a><\/p>\n

Wakefield Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of world rights to Roz Bellamy\u2019s\u00a0Mood<\/i>, a memoir exploring the intersections of mental illness, queerness, gender diversity and Jewish identity.<\/span><\/h1>\n

Bellamy is the online editor at\u00a0Archer<\/i>\u00a0magazine and has just completed the prestigious US literary publisher Tin House\u2019s Summer Workshop, working on the manuscript for\u00a0Mood<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0Mood<\/i>\u00a0was longlisted for the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. An earlier version was shortlisted for the Scribe Nonfiction Prize.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Read on to discover more about this exciting new acquisition, and to hear Roz’s thoughts on joining the Wakefield Press team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018I’m thrilled that Wakefield Press will be publishing my debut memoir,\u2019 says Bellamy. \u2018I’ve admired Wakefield Press for many years and I’m so excited to be joining their list of authors.\u2019<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wakefield Press associate publisher Jo Case says that when she noticed Bellamy was writing a memoir, she was intrigued, and thought about asking to read it. She\u2019d admired Bellamy\u2019s essay in\u00a0Growing Up Queer in Australia<\/i>\u00a0(Black Inc.), and their essay exploring queer and Jewish identity in\u00a0Living and Loving in Diversity<\/i><\/a>, an anthology published by Wakefield Press in 2018 (edited by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli).<\/span><\/p>\n

Then a colleague, Wakefield senior editor Julia Beaven, mentioned the manuscript had just been submitted to her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I talked about how much I wanted to read it until she gave it to me to take home, possibly to shut me up,\u2019 Case said. \u2018As well as Roz\u2019s essays, I\u2019d read their pieces in the\u00a0Guardian<\/i>,\u00a0Meanjin<\/i>\u00a0and SBS, and I was excited by the combination of their inquiring, intelligent mind and the material they were exploring. Roz\u2019s candour, unflinching gaze and flair for personal writing come together in\u00a0Mood<\/i>\u00a0to create a compelling personal journey embedded in psychology and experience. I\u2019m so looking forward to working with them on it.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Bellamy has been widely published as a freelance writer in various places, including\u00a0Crikey<\/i>,\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/i>,\u00a0Kill Your Darlings<\/i>,\u00a0Overland<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0The Big Issue<\/i>. They are a PhD candidate at the\u00a0Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society\u00a0at La Trobe University\u00a0researching\u00a0life writing as a creative health promotion method.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u2018From the first time we talked, I could tell that Jo and the team really connected with my memoir and that they share a very similar vision for it,\u2019 says Bellamy. \u2018I\u2019m excited for my book to reach readers soon!\u2019<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

ABOUT MOOD<\/em>:<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"RozMood<\/i>\u00a0is a memoir that perfectly suits our times, and our collective journey to understand how we are shaped by our identities. It is a testament to hard-won healing through self-knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roz Bellamy is a first-generation Jewish Australian who grew up in a progressive family, attending an orthodox school. Roz, who identifies as nonbinary, met their wife, Rachel, as a university student, as the pair made their first tentative forays into queer culture \u2013 and fell in love \u2013 through a\u00a0Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i>\u00a0online message board. As a young teacher, Roz\u2019s longstanding anxiety intensified, as past trauma of being bullied in their own schooldays and the creeping toll of antisemitism in the classroom undermined their burning desire to be the \u2018perfect\u2019 teacher.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therapy to treat their distress became a deeper inquiry. As Roz began to investigate and unfurl the various strands of their identity, and how they intersect to make them who they are, they were handed more pieces of the puzzle, with diagnoses of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mood<\/i>\u00a0is a story about love, family and self-fulfilment, while living with mental illness. It\u2019s also a candid, absorbing inquiry into the self, and the rewards of embracing who you are, in all its complexity and contradictions. Even \u2013 especially \u2013 when it\u2019s hard.\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Blending storytelling and reflection, this incisive, thoughtful memoir will appeal to fans of Kate Richards, Maria Tumarkin, Leslie Jamison and Kylie Maslen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wakefield Press is delighted to announce the acquisition of world rights to Roz Bellamy\u2019s\u00a0Mood, a memoir exploring the intersections of mental illness, queerness, gender diversity and Jewish identity. Bellamy is the online editor at\u00a0Archer\u00a0magazine and has just completed the prestigious … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-fun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-18K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4389,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions\/4389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}