Events
Readings & appearances
Upcoming events
Confirmed readings, talks and appearances. Dates are added here as they are booked.
Nothing scheduled right now
Dates and venues for upcoming readings and appearances will be posted here. If you would like to arrange one, send an invitation.
Past appearances
Once a date has passed, its entry moves down here so the record stays intact.
What to expect
What a reading actually looks like
A reading from The Pain Sings a Song runs about an hour: three or four poems read aloud, the story around them, and then questions. It is quieter than most author events and the questions tend to be more personal.
The poems are short, so the reading itself takes less time than people expect. Most of the hour is the conversation afterwards. In congregations the questions are usually about faith and whether it held. On campuses they are about diagnosis and disclosure — whether to tell a roommate, a tutor, an employer. With families the questions are almost always some version of the same one: what should I have noticed, and what do I do now.
Shalanda answers those as someone who has been the person being asked about, not as a clinician, and she says so. Where a question needs a professional answer she will point at one rather than improvise. That distinction is part of why the sessions work in clinical settings as well as community ones.
If a session is open to the public rather than to a closed group, it is worth having the 988 Lifeline visible in the room and someone from your own pastoral, counselling or peer-support team available afterwards. The speaking page sets out the rest of what organisers find useful.
Hosting
Bringing a reading to your group
Congregations
A Sunday-adjacent evening session, or a slot inside an existing pastoral-care programme. Faith and mental illness are handled together rather than as separate subjects.
Campuses and schools
Usually run with counselling services, often around a mental-health awareness week. Works as a keynote, or as a reading plus a writing workshop across two sessions.
Support groups and clinical teams
Smaller rooms, more questions, less reading. Peer-support organisations such as the DBSA run groups that this format suits well.
For hosts
Four things worth settling before the date
Who is in the room, and do they know each other. A closed support group and an open public evening need different sessions. In a closed group people will disclose things in front of people they will see next week, which is powerful and needs handling; in an open room almost nobody will speak, and the questions arrive afterwards, one at a time, quietly.
Where the exit is, and whether using it is conspicuous. This is a small detail with real consequences. A room where leaving means walking across the front is a room where an unwell person will stay in their seat through something they should not be sitting through. Seat the session so that stepping out is unremarkable, and say at the start that it is fine to do so.
Who is available afterwards. Have a named person — a chaplain, a counsellor, a peer supporter — who is staying behind and whom the audience has been told about by name. Put the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline somewhere visible: call or text 988, free and confidential, 24 hours a day. For people who want a referral rather than a crisis line, the SAMHSA National Helpline on 1-800-662-4357 is the right number, and the NAMI HelpLine on 1-800-950-6264 is better for family members with questions about services.
Whether you are selling books, and who handles it. Book sales at these events tend to involve longer conversations at the signing table than at a normal author event, because people queue to say something rather than to get a signature. Budget more time than the number of copies suggests, and do not schedule anything immediately afterwards in the same room.
Remote
Sessions held online
Readings, Q&A sessions and panels all work remotely, and for some groups they work better. People who would not walk into a church hall to attend something about bipolar disorder will join from their own kitchen with the camera off, and that is not a lesser form of attendance — it is often the only form available to the person who most needs it.
Two adjustments make a real difference online. Take questions in writing as well as aloud, because the chat box is where the honest ones arrive. And nominate someone other than the speaker to watch that channel, so a disclosure does not sit unanswered for twenty minutes while the talk continues.
The writing workshop is the one format that genuinely suffers online. It depends on a room being quiet together for ten minutes, which video calls are poor at. Groups that already know each other can manage it; for a group meeting for the first time, a reading and Q&A is the better use of the hour.
Access
Making a reading easier to attend
Publish the content warning wherever you publish the date, not only on the night. Someone deciding whether they can manage an evening about suicidal thinking and psychiatric hospitalization needs that information a week out, while they still have the choice.
Say how long the session runs and what the shape is — reading, then questions, then an unstructured half hour. Anxiety about an unbounded event keeps people away from exactly the sessions most likely to help them. If you can, offer a way to submit a question in writing rather than aloud; at these events the written questions are consistently the ones that matter most.
Where a venue allows it, keeping a few seats near the back free, and not filling the room front-to-back, makes a measurable difference to who stays for the whole hour. None of this is specific to mental health, but it matters more here than at a normal reading.
Questions
Attending and hosting
Are there any events scheduled right now?
Whatever is confirmed appears at the top of this page. If the Upcoming section is empty, nothing is currently booked — dates go up here as soon as they are arranged.
How do I find out when something is announced?
The writing page carries a monthly note by email — one poem and a short update, including any dates. It is the only mailing list, and it is not used for anything else.
Are events free to attend?
That depends entirely on the host. Church, campus and support-group sessions are usually free and open; ticketed events are run by the venue. Each listing says who is hosting.
Can we record the session?
Ask when you invite her. Recording is often fine, but audience questions at these events are frequently personal disclosures, so most hosts choose to record the talk and stop before the Q&A.
How far ahead should we book?
As far as you can. Sessions tied to an awareness week or a term date are worth raising several months out, because those weeks fill quickly.
Is the session suitable for young people?
It has been given in high schools, always in coordination with the school’s own counselling staff. The material is honest about suicidal thinking and hospitalization, so it needs the same preparation you would give any frank session on the subject: advance notice to families, a named adult available afterwards, and agreement on how directly the talk should go. Shalanda will adjust the register, but she will not pretend the illness was milder than it was.
What does it cost?
It varies with format, travel and the kind of organisation asking. Say what you have in mind when you get in touch and she will tell you straight away whether it works.
If you need help now
Where to find real support
This website is a book, not a crisis service, and nothing on it is medical advice. The organisations below are staffed by people who are trained for this, and all of them are free.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, every day, across the United States. It is for suicidal crisis, mental-health crisis and substance-use crisis alike — you do not have to be at the worst point to call.
NAMI HelpLine
1-800-950-6264, or text “NAMI” to 62640, Monday to Friday, 10am–10pm ET. The National Alliance on Mental Illness answers questions about diagnosis, treatment and local services. It is explicitly not a crisis line — for a crisis, use 988. More at nami.org.
SAMHSA National Helpline
1-800-662-4357 (1-800-662-HELP), free and confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in English and Spanish. It is a treatment referral service: it will point you to local providers and support groups. See samhsa.gov.
Peer support
The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance runs peer-led groups, online and in person, for people living with mood disorders and for the people who love them. Mental Health America publishes free screening tools and plain-language guides.
Outside the United States, contact your local emergency number or health service.