Alice Meems
, Melissa Poremba
, Mary Therrien
, Shannon Leclerc
, Agnes Marshall
, Patricia Johnson
, Barry Kazimer
, cassandra schiemann
, Janice Hutchinson
, Sarah Schwartz
, Marilyn Stanley
, Joanna McFarlane-Frampton
, Dawn Macdonald
, Emma Parker
, Jude Castillo
, Tyra Antle
, Noelle Walsh
, Sandra Perry
, Linda Leitch
, Hoda Montazeri
, Andrea Pole
, Natasa Ilic
, Cathalynn Labonte-Smith
, Margo Beredjiklian
, Susan Jang
, Anna Krentz
, Teree Hokanson
, Andrea Gillespie
, Deb Philippon
, PATRICIA SOPEL
, Rhona Brinkman
, Elaine Baptie
, Chris Carvalho
, Dani Kat
, Claudie Léveillé
, Connie Bennett
, Claire Gear
, Shawna Moodie
, Deanna Radford
, Diane Normandin
, Lynn Bechtel
, Sherry Heschuk
, Janet Miller
, Karen Kendrick
, Christine Lion
, Pamela Roberts Griffith
, Benita Hartwell
, Randi Ann Doll
, Susan Terendy
, Rachel Edmonds
, Paula Adam
, Joe Mitchell
, Derek Davidson
, Janice Cournoyer
, M M English
, Nancy Reid
, Rodney Cross
, Rosa Cross
, Kim Cappellina
, Ken Gilmour
, Sara Conway
, Kym Marsh
, Diane O'Flaherty
, Lisa Mallia
, Shayla Bradley
Told in kaleidoscopic bursts of erratic recollections, daydreams, poetry, and lists, Mercy Gene is the powerful, genre-smashing debut work of auto-fiction by acclaimed writer, playwright, and comedian JD Derbyshire. Inspired by Derbyshire’s critically acclaimed and award-winning stage play, Certified, and anchored by protagonist Janice/Jan/JD, Mercy Gene is a beautiful, humorous, and sometimes brutal look at queerness, gender confusion, institutionalization, addiction, and abuse.
Through flashes of memory and imaginings, Derbyshire illustrates the intense and invisible “side effects” of psychiatric treatment and the unreliability of memory. In a stream-of-conscious narrative that provokes and consoles, eliciting tears and laughter at equal pace, Derbyshire re-examines a life of unspoken and repressed trauma. Between devastating bouts of depression, hilarious side-quests into the author’s dryly sardonic inner monologue, helpless moments at the mercy of their own psyche, and tour-de-force appearances by fictional versions of Miriam Toews and the late, great Margot Kidder, Derbyshire leads readers through a non-linear narrative to treatment, forgiveness, and acceptance.
