Magic, Memory & Writing Mental Illness

🎙️ New episode: Bassey Ikpi on her bestseller "I’m Telling the Truth but I’m Lying"

Feb 27, 2025

Hi Bleeders!

You know that feeling when a book hits you so hard you even cry during the acknowledgments? That was me with Bassey Ikpi's I’m Telling the Truth but I’m Lying—one of my all-time favorite books.

If you’ve ever felt like writing a book isn’t for you because it seems too magical and elusive, Bassey’s interview will change your mind. (Spoiler: she is a magician, but she’s also proof that the magic of writing is accessible to all of us.)

Bassey never felt like she had a reason to write a book, but she had started to amass a body of work. She actually started writing a different book, and it wasn’t until she was in the midst of a mental health crisis that she realized it needed to take on a more authentic form—one that fully captured the truth of her experiences. And let me tell you, she absolutely nailed it. (God bless her editor for encouraging her to keep going.)

We get into how her personal struggles shaped her writing—from journaling through depressive episodes to unpacking which parts of her identity were truly hers and which were symptoms of mental illness.

One of my favorite moments from the interview? Her publisher wanted to cut an essay, saying, “Well, it's just so long, and by the middle, we're exhausted.” She fought to keep it, saying, “Good. Me too.” Because when you’re writing about Bipolar II, your reader should feel the whirlwind and exhaustion.

Bassey is candid, funny, and incredibly wise about the writing process.

In this episode, we talk about:

✨ Emotional accuracy vs. chronological accuracy in memoir writing
✨ Finding the right literary agent and the magic of a good editor
✨ The difference between writing poetry and prose—and how her background in spoken word shapes her writing style
✨ The influence of J. California Cooper on Bassey’s work—and why sometimes the best storytelling isn’t about building whole worlds but focusing on the smallest of corners

Plus, if you’ve ever poured everything into a project, only to realize that success—however you define it—can be a total mindf*ck, Bassey takes us deep into the emotional rollercoaster of publishing.

She opens up about releasing a book she loved, only to have random awards she’d never heard of send her into a tailspin. We talk about how weird industry hype cycles and the strange social dynamics of book publishing—who follows you when your book is hot and who ghosts you when the buzz cools—can leave writers feeling alternately on top of the world and completely unseen.

Sure, publishing can be an emotional minefield, but this episode will embrace you in a warm hug. It’s a must-listen for anyone writing memoir about mental health issues, struggling with memory in their nonfiction, or navigating how much of other people’s lives to include in their work.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.