99. Creative Liberation: The Intersection of Mental Health, Neurodivergence, and Gender Queer Experiences with Lyo-Demi Green

Building visions towards a liberatory future will take creative power, vulnerability, radical imagination, and the capacity to honor difference in all its beauty. Lyo-Demi exemplifies this courage and power in their writing and poetry: “My diagnosis of “bipolar disorder,” in my opinion, is both a sensitivity towards and reaction to traumas (both personal and systemic) that yields strength, creativity, and passion, and my diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”…well that just makes me fabulous.” (From essay: Not Confused, Not Crazy) As we ‘reinvent the world,’ many of us have to wade through the nuances of adopting or rejecting labels, and find ways to support ourselves and each other, both within and outside systems. In this episode, Lyo-Demi and I talk about DSM categories, the generative and difficult aspects of mental health concerns, and the gift and power of creativity.

In this episode we discuss:

• the power of mutual aid and peer support
• reframing and depathologizing mental health diagnoses
• generative aspects of what gets labeled bipolar and mania honoring difference at the intersection of neurodiversity and gender queerness
• using creativity, graphic novels and stories to build visions toward liberation

Bio

Lyo-Demi Green (they/them) is a queer and non-binary writer, graphic novelist and tenured community college professor living in the San Francisco Bay Area on Ohlone Land. They have been published on Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Foglifter, and elsewhere. They have been featured at dozens of reading series, slams, showcases, and workshops in schools, colleges, and open mics locally and across the country. They co-edited We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health with Kelechi Ubozoh, published by North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin Random House in 2019. They authored Phoenix Song, published by Black Lawrence Press in 2022. They received a BA from Vassar College and have an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. LD has attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, was a Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow, and was selected for Tin House and Stowe Story Labs. LD’s queer and trans rom-com fantasy screenplay Journey to the Enchanted Inkwell was a finalist in several national contests. With the help of the Sequential Artists’ Workshop, they adapted this project into a YA graphic novel script. They met their collaborating artist Jamie Kiemle through the online community Kids Comics Unite. LD is a decades-long fan of graphic novels, and they have taught them for over a decade at places like the San Francisco Art Institute and others. They are represented by literary agent Jennifer Newens of Martin Literary and Media Management.

Links

@leoninetales on IG and Threads

www.ldgreen.org

http://www.ldgreen.org/graphic-novel.html

https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/phoenix-song/

Not Confused, Not Crazy Essay

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