My son, Max, and I have published a joint memoir, Walks on the Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness. After Max was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was twenty and a junior at Grinnell College, I struggled to help him and keep my family functioning.   Eventually I turned to community resources and discovered the local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI).   I became active in advocacy for those with mental illness and eventually became the President of the Board of the affiliate.  As a writer, my advocacy inevitably involved writing about the issues.  And I wanted to tell Max’s story so that people would understand the difficulties of having this illness, made worse by stigma, and that recovery is possible.  But I wouldn’t do it without Max.  Though reliving the years of illness would be painful, Max agreed to write the book with me. The result is the memoir about our joint and separate struggles with the illness. I also write the Hannah Sampson Underwater Investigation Series.  Kathy has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Rhetoric and taught writing at the University of Colorado for ten years.  I live in the mountains of Colorado. My son, Max Maddox, has a BA in philosophy from Grinnell College and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, where he was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Award and received the Fellowship Trust Award. He has exhibited his work in galleries including The Slought Foundation, The Print Center of Philadelphia, and the Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum. He lives in Colorado where he teaches and continues to pursue his career in art.

2013 National NAMI Award. NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country.