 Gwyneth Lewis graduated Cambridge with honors, received a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford and was a producer and director at BBC Wales. That was before a bout of depression left her barely able to get out of bed for months. She was off work for eleven months and took two years to fully recover. Her health and creativity returned and she was appointed Wales’s first National Poet in 2005. She writes about her battle with depression in SUNBATHING IN THE RAIN: A Cheerful Book on Depression (October 2006, Jessica Kingsley Publishers Paperback, $14.95; 1-84310-505-5; 272 pages).
First published in the United Kingdom (HarperCollins Flamingo, 2003), SUNBATHING IN THE RAIN was short listed for the Mind Book of the Year. Lewis gives readers a comprehensive and personal view of depression. She considered it a gift. Her body needed to shut down to recuperate and reenergize. She learned to accept and flow with her depression, until her body and mind were ready to fully engage in everyday activities again. This was the book she would have wanted to read during the worst of her depression. In true “happy ending” fashion, she finally gets out of bed and sets sail with her husband on the adventure of a lifetime.
Gwyneth Lewis has published six books of poetry in Welsh and English. Most recently, she wrote Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage which recounts sailing with her husband on a small boat from Cardiff to North Africa. She composed the words on the front of Cardiff’s new Wales Millennium Centre and a libretto for an opera commissioned by the Welsh National Opera. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member of the Welsh Academi and a NESTA Fellow. She spent three years in the United States as a Harkness Fellow.
Jessica Kingsley Publishers specializes in producing accessible professional and academic books in the social and behavioral sciences. In 2007, Jessica Kingsley Publishers was named both the Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year and the overall Independent Publisher of the Year at the Independent Publishing Awards in London. The prizes coincide with Jessica Kingsley Publishers' 20th year as an independent company. Jessica Kingsley books are available worldwide through distributors, local bookstores and online bookstores. The company has offices in London and Philadelphia. More information can be found at www.jkp.com. |
