Esmé Weijun Wang

Esmé Weijun Wang, the author of The Collected Schizophrenias is an American author of Taiwanese descent who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, an offshoot of schizophrenia that causes delusions and hallucinations and periods of psychosis. She writes of her personal experience in this collection of essays, beginning with her misdiagnosis with bipolar disorder just after high school. Wang attended Yale University for three semesters of undergrad, but was dismissed after twice being hospitalized for her mental health condition. She went on to study at Stanford (where she worked as a lab manager in the Psychology Department) and the University of Michigan, where she received her MFA. Wang's first book, a novel called The Border of Paradise, was published in 2016.

Wang writes about suffering from various levels of psychosis throughout the years of 2010-2013 in particular, including a protracted struggle with Cotard's delusion—the belief that she...