Ill Feelings: Stories of Unexplained Illness

Housmans Bookshop

A genre-bending debut and a moving and defiant exploration of life with a medically unexplained illness.

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In 1995 Alice’s mother collapsed with pneumonia. She never fully recovered and was eventually diagnosed with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Then Alice got ill. Their symptoms mirrored their mother’s and appeared to have no physical cause; they received the same diagnosis a few years later. Ill Feelings blends memoir, medical history, biography and literary non-fiction to uncover both of their case histories, and branches out into the records of ill health that women have written about in diaries and letters.Their cast of characters includes Virginia Woolf and Alice James, the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, John Ruskin’s lost love Rose la Touche, the artist Louise Bourgeois and the nurse Florence Nightingale.Suffused with a generative, transcendent rage, Alice Hattrick’s genre-bending debut is a moving and defiant exploration of life with a medically unexplained illness. Alice will be joined in conversation with Abi Palmer, author of Santatorium.SPEAKERSAlice Hattrick‘s criticism and interviews have appeared in publications such as frieze magazine, ArtReview and The White Review. Alice’s work has most recently been included in Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art: HEALTH (ed. Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, 2020) and Mine Searching Yours (Forma, 2020). They are the co-producer of Access Docs for Artists, a resource for disabled and/or chronically ill artists, curators and writers, made in collaboration with artists Leah Clements and Lizzy Rose. In 2016, they were shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize. Ill Feelings is their first book.Abi Palmer is an writer, artist and filmmaker. Her work often uses multisensory interaction and multiple forms. Notable artworks Crip Casino – an interactive gambling arcade parodying the wellness industry and institutionalised spaces – has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Somerset House and Wellcome Collection. Her debut book Sanatorium (Penned in the Margins, 2020) is a fragmented memoir, jumping between luxury thermal pool, and blue inflatable bathtub. It was shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize. In 2020 she was awarded an Artangel ‘Thinking Time’ Grant to address the current pandemic. Her current work explores themes of access, isolation and the urgency of climate change, through attempting to capture, distil and convey the entire outside world into small ritualistic performances and sculpture for her indoor cats. www.abipalmer.comHOW TO ACCESS THIS ONLINE EVENTAn invitation to this online event will be emailed to you on the day of the event. We will use the email address used to register for this event. Confirmation emails and invitation links sometimes end up in spam folders, so please check there before emailing the shop. Thank you.TICKET INFORMATIONIf you’d like a copy of the Ill Feelings then choose the book plus entry ticket. If you’d like to support Housmans then please choose a solidarity ticket. There’s also a free access ticket for students, low income and unwaged comrades.

Alice Hattrick photo (c) Jacques Testard

Abi Palmer photo (c) Faith Aylward and Mia Maxwell

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Ill Feelings: Stories of Unexplained Illness

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