Sabrina Chap is a writer, performer and activist whose groundbreaking collection, Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, is quickly becoming a fixture in the new mental health scene. A thought provoking and engaging speaker, Chap has spoken on art, creativity, gender and self-destruction in colleges, museums and writing centers in the US and abroad. She began her lecture and workshop facilitating skills in DIY festivals such as Ladyfests and the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, soon refining her presentations in front of National Organization of Women college campus groups to budding artists at the Brooklyn Museum.
Chap is also a respected musician and performer who has toured nationally and internationally with her music, a unique brand of cabaret that brings her to burlesque and circus stages world-wide. Her ability to compel an audience as a trained performer, combined with the survival skills learned through her focus on self-destruction, makes her heartfelt lectures and workshops a powerful and liberating experience for audiences. Her work and brand of mental health activism has been featured in Bitch magazine, The Advocate, Bust, KEXP, and the International Museum of Women. The Advocate stated, “Live Through This delves deep into the psyches of poets, dancers, playwrights, and performers (including Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Kate Bornstein, and Margaret Cho) to reveal the forces that drive artists toward both passion and pain.” As a writer, her work has been featured in anthologies, Feministing, Adbusters, Gathering of the Tribes and more
All in all, Sabrina Chap is a unique brand of speaker – rooted in DIY activism and mental health politics, while lecturing with the intensity of a passionate performer who captures the complexities on the compelling nature of both self-creation and self- destructive acts.
Praise for Sabrina Chap
“For women whose talents include a canny ability to self-annihilate, this book is a tonic. Read it and weep. Literally.” –Jennifer Baumgardner, author of Look Both Ways
“Live Through This, strikes me in all ways as a carefully crafted object-which so few books are these days.” -Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters
“[Live Through This] posits a hopeful message: that while the quirks and sensitivities of a creative mind often seem predisposed to depression, they are also the exact qualities that provide a special set of tools with which to find a way through the darkest moments.” –BUST magazine
“The 16 essays and visuals that make up Live Through This plum the depths of out-of-control lives, examining how self-destruction functions as both a hindrance and a productive challenge. Unlike what Hollywood would like us to believe about them, the contributors—artists, writers, and musicians—are neither weak nor one-dimensional.” –BITCH magazine
