May is Mental Health Month, and we are honored to offer a program by KWG member Melanie K. Hutsell, a native of Kingsport, Tennessee, who has been learning to live with bipolar disorder for more than fifteen years. Her second novel, The Book of Susan, is forthcoming in May 2022 from Paraclete Press. In the novel Hutsell offers a first-person narrative of Dr. Susan Huffman, a woman whose mind has never failed her—until an ill-fated dinner party. The story is the spare and sympathetic recounting of a journey—from derailment, to diagnosis, to the discovery of a lifetime.

Hutsell’s first novel, The Dead Shall Rise, was published in 2016 by Celtic Cat Publishing. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, The Madison Review, Still: The Journal, The Sow’s Ear, and elsewhere. Hutsell was a Featured Author at Knoxville’s National Authors Day in 2019 and has appeared on WDVX’s WordStream. An avid reader and music lover, she currently resides in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.