Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.

He study at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1900 to 1903. In 1904 he left to attend the New York School of Art (now The New School) to study pen and ink. Lindsay remained interested in art for the rest of his life, drawing illustrations for some of his poetry. In 1905, Lindsay's primary focus became his poetry. 

Lindsay received a fair amount of acclaim and success, however, his writing accomplishments were overshadowed by his themes around African Americans, in which he represented both his respect for their musical culture, but also contributed to the stereotypes of the 'savage' African.

Lindsay's personal life was rife with financial struggles, especially in his late forties when he married a much younger wife and had two children. He exhausted himself travelling to do poetry readings, with little financial success.

On December 5, 1931, Nicholas Lindsay died by suicide. He was fifty two years old.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay 

November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931

Bryan Johnson

Bryan Stanley Johnson was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programs and films.

While not well known, Johnson still has a cult following. A critically acclaimed film adaptation of the last of the novels published while he was alive, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973), was released in 2000.

In April 2013, the British Film Institute released You're Human Like the Rest of Them, a collection of Johnson's films, as part of the BFI Flipside DVD series.

There is a large collection of literary papers and correspondence of B. S. Johnson in the British Library.

Most of his acclaim occurred posthumously. In the latter years of his life, Johnson was increasingly depressed by his lack of commercial success. On November 13, 1973, Bryan Johnson lost his life to suicide. He was forty years old at the time of his death.

Bryan Johnson

February 5, 1933 – November 13, 1973 

Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane was an English playwright. Kane's published work consists of five plays and one short film (Skin).

Kane's plays have been widely performed in Europe, Australia and South America. In 2005, theater director Dominic Dromgoole wrote that she was "without doubt the most performed new writer on the international circuit". At one point in Germany, there were 17 simultaneous productions of her work. In November 2010, the theatre critic Ben Brantley of the New York Times described the SoHo Rep's "shattering production" of Kane's Blasted (which had opened two years previously) as "one of the most important New York premieres of the decade". 

Kane was known to have struggled with severe depression throughout her adult life. On February 20, 1999, Sarah Kane died by suicide. She was twenty eight years old when she died.

Sarah Kane 

February 3, 1971 – February 20, 1999 

Iris Chang

Iris Shun-Ru Chang was an American author and journalist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography, Finding Iris Chang, and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking.

In the early 2000s, Chang began to experience significant depression and some episodes of psychosis. She was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown in August of 2004. Many things have been suggested as reasons for her mental illness, including possible medication side effects, an existing chemical imbalance, or the trauma and sleep deprivation related to the nature of her work.

On November 9, 2004, Iris Shun-Ru Chang died by suicide. She left behind a husband and a two year old son. Iris Chang was thirty five years old when she died.

Iris Shun-Ru Chang 

March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004

DAY 25 - Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik was an Argentinian poet. She was born in Avellaneda, a city within the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. Her imigrant Jewish parents were from Rowno (now Ukraine). 

Pizamik was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968, and in 1971 a Fulbright Scholarship. Her best-known books of poetry were: Los trabajos y las noches (1965), Extracción de la piedra de la locura (1968) and El infierno musical (1971).

Pizamik had a difficult childhood, struggling with self-esteem issues, as well as having a stutter. Due to weight gain that upset her, she began to take amphetamines. She became strongly addicted and struggled with long periods of sleep disorders that caused insomnia.

Despite her writing and academic successes, Pizamik lost her life to suicide just one year after receiving her Fulbright Scholarship. She was 36 years old when she died.

Alejandra Pizarnik 

April 29, 1936 – September 25, 1972

DAY 21 - Charles Jackson

Charles Reginald Jackson was an American author widely known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.

As a young teen, Jackson experienced a significant trauma. When he was thirteen years old, his older sister Thelma and younger brother Richard were killed while riding in a car that was struck by an express train.

As an adult Jackson struggled with alcoholism and addiction. He suffered from mental illness and in the years prior to his death, he was repeatedly suicidal and hospitalized more than once. 

Jackson did have years of sobriety, but at the end of his life he suffered a relapse. Charles Jackson died by suicide on September 21, 1968. He was sixty five years old.

Charles Jackson 

April 6, 1903 – September 21, 1968

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun.

― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the 'Father of the Japanese short story' and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.

Akutagawa had a genetic predisposition to depression, as his mother suffered from mental illness. He was taken away from his mother and adopted by an aunt and uncle, when he was still a young child. Still, he began dealing with the symptoms of mental illness when he was in his early twenties.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa died by suicide on July 24, 1927. He was married and left behind three young children. Akutagawa was 35 years old when he died.

 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

March 1, 1892 - July 24, 1927

William Inge

William Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist. In the early 1950s, his Broadway production Picnic earned him a Pulitzer Prize. 

During the early 1970s, Inge lived in Los Angeles, where he taught playwriting at the University of California, Irvine. His last several plays attracted little notice or critical acclaim, and he fell into a deep depression, convinced he would never be able to write well again.

On June 10th, 1973, William Inge died by suicide. He was 60 years old.

William Inge

May 3, 1913 – June 10, 1973 

The Beauty of Grief

For my fellow survivors of suicide loss and for my fellow survivors of suicide attempts.
Hold on. Be strong. One step after another.
You are not alone.

Paul Gruchow

Paul Gruchow was an American author, editor, and conservationist from Montevideo, Minnesota. A student of poet John Berryman, he is well known for his strong support of rural communities, as expressed in his first book, "Journal of a Prairie Year" published by University of Minnesota Press. His essays in Grass Roots: The Universe of Home, document his ideas with stories of growing up in rural Chippewa County Minnesota.

Gruchow suffered from depression and on February 22, 2004, shortly after completing the first draft of a book about depression, he lost his life to suicide. Paul Gruchow was fifty six years old when he died.

Paul Gruchow 

May 23, 1947 – February 22, 2004

Spalding Gray

Spalding Rockwell Gray was an American actor and writer. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works. He also starred in several of these films.

Gray achieved renown for his monologue Swimming to Cambodia, which he adapted as a 1987 film in which he starred; it was directed by Jonathan Demme. Other of his monologues which Gray adapted for film were Monster in a Box (1991), directed by Nick Broomfield, and Gray's Anatomy (1996), directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Gray struggled with a lifelong depression and in 2001 he suffered injuries in a car accident that left him further distressed. On January 11, 2004, Spalding Gray died by suicide. He was sixty two years old.

Spalding Rockwell Gray 

June 5, 1941 – January 11, 2004

James Robert Baker

James Robert Baker was an American author of satirica fiction. A native Californian, his work is set almost entirely in Southern California. After graduating from UCLA, he began his career as a screenwriter, but became disillusioned and started writing novels instead. He garnered fame for his books Fuel-Injected Dreams and Boy Wonder.First-edition copies of his earlier works have become collector's items. 

Baker died by suicide at his home on November 5, 1997. Much of his work had its greatest success posthumously. James Robert Baker was fifty years old when he died.

James Robert Baker 

October 18, 1947 – November 5, 1997

Charles Jackson - DAY 21

Charles Reginald Jackson was an American author widely known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.

As a young teen, Jackson experienced a significant trauma. When he was thirteen years old, his older sister, Thelma, and younger brother, Richard, were killed while riding in a car that was struck by an express train.

As an adult Jackson struggled with an addiction to alcohol and pills. He suffered from mental illness and in the years prior to his death, he was repeatedly suicidal and hospitalized more than once. 

Jackson did have years of sobriety, but at the end of his life he suffered a relapse. Charles Jackson died by suicide on September 21, 1968. He was sixty five years old.

Charles Jackson 

April 6, 1903 – September 21, 1968

Thomas Chatterton

Almighty Framer of the Skies! O let our pure devotion rise, Like Incense in thy Sight! Wrapt in impenetrable Shade, The Texture of our Souls were made, Till thy Command gave Light.

-Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton (November 20, 1752 – August 24, 1770) was an English poet whose work began to garner attention and be published when he was just eleven years old. He did this by passing off his work as having been written by an imaginary fifteenth century poet named Thomas Rowley.

Chatterton was raised without a father and in extreme poverty. By his teens he was already concerned about how he would manage to support himself financially as he grew older. Growing despondent over this and perhaps with the beginnings of mental illness beginning to present, Thomas Chatterton died by suicide on August 24, 1770. He was just seventeen years old when he died.

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian. Howard is considered the the originator of the sword and sorcery subgenre.

Howard's writing was published in many magazines, journals, and newspapers, however his greatest success occurred after his death.

Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime. Howard remains a highly read author today, with his best works still reprinted.

It has been speculated that Howard dealt with depression and mental illness throughout his life. In addition, his mother had been ill with tuberculosis his entire life. When he learned that she was in a coma that she would not recover from, Robert E. Howard died by suicide. He was thirty years old.

Robert E. Howard 

January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936

Jason Moss

Jason Michael Moss was an American attorney who specialized in criminal defense. He was best known as the author of The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey into the Mind of the Serial Killer (1999), a memoir about his exploration of the minds of incarcerated serial killers, which started as a research project in college. He corresponded and conducted personal interviews with several notorious killers.

Many have suggested that Moss's focus on serial killers contributed to extreme anxiety and depression on his part. Moss himself stated that he felt as if some of his communications with with serial killers left him feeling manipulated and victimized. 
On June 6, 2006, Jason Moss lost his life to suicide. He was 31 years old when he died.

Jason Michael Moss 

February 3, 1975 – June 6, 2006

José María Arguedas

We were fascinated by the little glass spheres, by those dark waves of color, some narrow and drawn out into several swirls, and others that widened out in the center of the marble into a single bundle and thinned out smoothly at the ends. There were reddish streaks in Añuco's new marbles, but in the cloudy, chipped ones the bands of color also appeared, strangely and inexplicably.

― José María Arguedas, Antología poética

José María Arguedas was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Because he lived in two Quechua households (from the ages of seven through eleven) he had a rare fluency in the native Quechua language. He noted that the time spent in Quechua homes was in order to escape the trauma he experienced living with his step family, after his mother died (when he was aged two).

Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th-century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture. The American literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith said that Arguedas was "the greatest novelist of our time," who wrote "some of the most powerful prose that the world has known."

On December 2, 1969, Arguedas died by suicide. He left behind an autobiographical manuscript that noted depressive episodes that were caused by his early trauma, as his reason for suicide. He was fifty eight years old when he died.

José María Arguedas 

January 18, 1911 – December 2, 1969) 

Day 16 - Richard Brautigan

All of have a place in history. Mine is clouds.

- Richard Bratigan

Richard Gary Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels Trout Fishing in America (1967) and In Watermelon Sugar (1968).

Brautigan's published career began in the late 1950s. He would go on to publish numerous prose and poetry collections with his last collection published in 1982.

Brautigan suffered from alcoholism and depression throughout his adult life. On September 16, 1984, Richard Brautigan died by suicide. He was forty nine years old.

Richard Gary Brautigan

January 30, 1935 – September 16, 1984 

May Ayim

I will be african even if you want me to be german 

and i will be german even if my blackness does not suit you

i will go yet another step further

to the farthest edge

where my sisters-where my brothers stand

where our freedom begins

i will go yet another step further and another step 

and will return when i want if i want

and remain borderless and brazen

- Borderless and Brazen, May Ayim

May Ayim was an Afro-German poet, educator, and activist. The child of a German mother and Ghanaian medical student, she was adopted by a white German family when young. 

Ayim's writing was included in the book Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (1986). She worked as an activist to unite Afro-Germans and combat racism in German society. 

In 1996, Ayim suffered a mental and physical collapse and was hospitalized briefly. She was discharged despite still struggling with depression, 

May Ayimim died by suicide on August 9, 1996. She was thirty six years old.

May Ayim 

May 3, 1960 - August 9, 1996