In this episode, we speak to Reshma Valliappan, aka Val Resh, who is an artist, pantomime, writer, speaker and educator. Val has been advocating for creativity as a healing process since 2011 through her organization, The Red Door. Her unabashed, interdisciplinary work around mental health has given her recognition as an Ashoka & Ink Fellow 2014. Val's autobiography, 'Fallen, Standing: My Life as a Schizophrenist', has been a radical act of reclaiming one's own mental illness. 

In this episode, Val talks about some books which have been crucial to her understanding of mental illness and health, and the blurred boundaries between. We explore the intersections of disability and agency within literature, and the lack of own voices when it comes to writing stories of living with mental illness and challenging the associated stigma. Val brings up some truly fascinating questions about the meaning of freedom and consciousness within a thoroughly complex world. 

This is the fourth of the six episodes of the The Inclusive Bookshelf series. Keep a lookout for more episodes in the coming months.