JESSIE CLOSE is an internationally recognized speaker, author, poet, and advocate for mental health reform. She lives with bipolar disorder in the foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains outside Bozeman, Montana, with her Service Dog, Snitz, and three other dogs. She is the author of The Warping of Al (Harper & Row 1990), and she writes a regular blog for BringChange2Mind.org, an antistigma organization that her sister Glenn created at Jessie’s request.
Jessie has received awards from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the largest grassroots mental health organization in America with more than 600,000 members, and Mental Health America, the largest grassroots group of persons living with mental disorders. Along with her son Calen and sister Glenn, Jessie has also received the Jed Foundation Award, the McLean Award, and Research America’s Isadore Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion.
PETE EARLEY has penned thirteen books including four New York Times bestsellers. His book Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness was one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. After fourteen years as a journalist, including six years at the Washington Post, Pete became a full-time author with a commitment to exposing stories about social issues. Washingtonian magazine described him as one of a few authors with “the power to introduce new ideas and give them currency” after he spent a full year inside a maximum security prison for his award winning book, The Hot House. When his adult son was diagnosed with a severe mental illness and arrested, Pete recounted his family’s struggle in his book Crazy and became a tireless advocate for mental health reform, traveling to forty-eight states and multiple countries to deliver speeches about our troubled mental health system. A lifetime member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, his book received every major writing award given by mental health advocacy groups. In addition to contributing articles to national publications, he writes an often-quoted blog about mental health.