Katerina Bryant - Hysteria

When Katerina Bryant suddenly began experiencing chronic seizures, she was plunged into a foreign world of doctors and psychiatrists, who understood her condition as little as she did.

Blending memoir with literary and historical analysis, Hysteria finds a community of women who shared similar diagnoses throughout history – from the ‘Queen of Hysterics’ Blanche Wittmann to Mary Glover, who suffered from ‘hysterica passio’ in 1602. 

By exploring these stories of women who had no voice in their diagnosis and treatment, Bryant finds her own voice: powerful, brave and resonant. 

Katerina appears in-conversation with Fiona Wright on Zoom. 

This is a FREE event! You can also pre-order a copy of Hysteria, and we're happy to post your copy to you anywhere in Australia for free! The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration.  

Praise

‘Hysteria is a timely and exciting work, keenly interested in the long history of women being treated – and mistreated – by the medical system, and the ways in which their complicated legacy is still being felt today. At once deeply personal and broadly political, it is a touching and tender examination of what it means to live in a body and with a brain that is aberrant or unwell, and how we might find a shape for our selves and our experiences in these circumstances. Bryant is a careful and intelligent writer, and this is a book that will have a great impact on many people.’ — Fiona Wright.

‘At once devastating, hopeful, comforting and bold. Bryant captures precisely, beautifully what it is to be made uncertain by illness.’ — Anna Spargo-Ryan

About the Author

Katerina Bryant is a writer based in Adelaide. Her work has appeared in Griffith Review, Kill Your Darlings, Island Magazine and Voiceworks, among others. She has been shortlisted for the 2019 The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Writing, the 2018 Feminartsy Memoir Prize, and the 2016 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers. 

She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Flinders University. Hysteria is her first book.

About Fiona Wright

Fiona Wright is a writer, editor and critic from Sydney. Her most recent book of essays, The World Was Whole, was published in October 2018. Fiona worked as an editor at Giramondo Publishing for five years. She holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Western Sydney University, and is the host of 'Six Degrees From the City', a podcast about writers and Western Sydney.

She tutors casually in creative writing, as well as journalism and literature at Western Sydney University, and has taught creative non-fiction at UTS and Sydney University. She also runs writing workshops in high schools, libraries and for writers' centres, and performs her work frequently at literary events and festivals.