Mind Book of the Year Award 2011 - Winner announced

Posted Monday 12 September 2011

Mental health charity Mind today presented renowned performance artist Bobby Baker with its prestigious Book of the Year Award for her outstanding Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me ¹.

The work, which is a collection of drawings created over a decade of her life, is a poignant visual documentary of Bobby’s experiences of mental, and later physical, ill-health as well as her eventual recovery.

Diary Drawings is a collection of 158 drawings from a total of 711 which Bobby produced between 1997 and 2008, and the first book of its kind to win the Award in its 30 year history.

The combination of drawings and writing provides a graphic, often darkly comic insight into the life of an artist grappling with huge internal upheavals. As well as an introductory essay by author Marina Warner, Diary Drawings also includes essays both by Bobby and by her daughter Dora Whittuck, a clinical psychologist.

Mind Book of the Year judges, Fay Weldon, Blake Morrison and Michele Roberts chose Diary Drawings from over 100 entries as this year’s greatest literary contribution to increasing understanding of mental health issues.

Runner-up Emma Henderson was also given a Highly Commended award for her debut novel Grace Williams says it loud, a passionate and honest portrayal of life and love in a psychiatric hospital.

Judge Fay Weldon said of Diary Drawings:

This is the first graphic autobiography we’ve ever had in Mind’s Book of the Year – and it was very graphic!

She’s such an energetic and lively person and this just shows through in her honest view of herself and people around her. You can’t help but respond to it.

I think there’s a sea change with this year’s entries into a kind of acceptance about the possibilities and the future people with mental health problems can have.

On winning Bobby Baker said:

I’ve scarcely ever won anything in my life! I can’t imagine anything I’d be more proud to win in my whole life than the Mind Book of the Year Award.

I’m beyond pleased and it means an awful lot to people like me who’ve had experience of mental illness and for my family too.

The annual Mind Book of the Year Award, now in its 30^th year, celebrates outstanding works of fact or fiction that heighten understanding of mental health issues.

Nominated alongside Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me, were:

• Emma Henderson for Grace Williams says it out loud
• Joanne Limburg for The Woman who Thought too Much
• John Marzillier for The Gossamer Thread, Candia McWilliam for What to Look for in Winter
• Tim Parks for Teach us to Sit Still
• Wendy Perriam for Broken Places and
• Rupert Thomson for The Party’s Got to Stop.

To interview Bobby Baker, contact Anne-Marie at Profile Books on 020 7841 6304

1. Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me was published in 2010 by Profile Books.

Notes to editors

• Mind is the leading mental health charity in England and Wales. We work to create a better life for everyone with experience of mental distress.
• For more information about Mind’s Book of the Year Award and for any further interviews please contact Mind media office on T: 020 8522 1743 M: 07850 788514 E: media@mind.org.uk  ISDN line available: 020 8221 0817
• Please note that Mind is not an acronym and should be set in title case.

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