The artist and writer Seema Shah discusses the collection she’s co-edited (with Betsy Warland and Kate Bird) Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with Lived Experience of Mental Health Issues (Bell Press, 2025), with Joseph Planta.

Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with Lived Experience of Mental Health Issues edited by Betsy Warland, Seema Shah, and Kate Bird (Bell Press, 2025). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Off the Map

Text of the introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.  

There’s a new collection of writing out now that illuminates what it’s like for writers and creative people to contend with mental health issues. Off the Map: Vancouver Writers with Lived Experience of Mental Health Issues is the title of the collection and it features thirty-three writers who showcase their writing be it memoir, non-fiction, fiction, or poetry. Some bare themselves to varying degrees, while they all navigate their writing with an honesty that is refreshing. The collection is edited by Betsy Warland, Seema Shah, and Kate Bird. Seema Shah joins me now, and I’ll ask her about how the collection came about, what about the process of editing the collection did she find interesting and informative, and what she hopes the collection will yield for a reader. Seema Shah is a self-taught visual artist and writer with lived experience of mental health issues. Her creative nonfiction has been published in literary journals and anthologies, shortlisted for the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives’ Narrative Essay Contest and twice for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference Contest, and longlisted for the Susan Crean Award for Nonfiction 2023. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in Canada, the US, and the UK, and she was a recipient of The Beaumont Studios’ Artist to Watch Award 2022. Visit www.seemashahart.com for more. This new collection is published by Bell Press. We spoke last Wednesday. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Seema Shah; Seema, good morning.  

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