Meet Amy Willans from ArtsHub 118

Amy Willans is an award-winning mental health advocate, writer and speaker. She was the first peer support worker on an Alberta Health Services (AHS) Addiction and Mental Health clinical team, and was a community education presenter and peer support worker for the Schizophrenia Society of Alberta from 2007-2021. Willans is the author of Haunted by Blue (The Rasp and The Wine), and her written work has been published in The Globe and Mail, on CBC and in various journals and anthologies. She is a past participant in the lowa Writers Workshop graduate program at the University of lowa; and has been a featured guest on the CBC Radio One show, White Coat, Black Art; Global News and Bell Media.

Willans was a recipient of the 2015 Partner in Health award, presented by The College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta for her work in bringing peer support to clinical teams in AHS, The Edmonton Mayor’s 2019 Ewen Nelson Award for Self-Advocacy, and the 2019 Momentum Mental Health Leader award, presented by Momentum Walk-in Counselling. In collaboration with visual artist and poet, Laurie MacFayden, Willans co-created the installation Fighting Normal, a multi-discipline collaboration, exploring the stigma of mental illness. She is currently publishing a new memoir, and working with visual artist, Gillian Willans, on a series of ekphrastic poems. Living at ArtsHub has allowed her the time and space to write her latest memoir. The support from the co-op community has been so encouraging that her confidence as a writer has grown, and it’s inspired her to experiment with different writing genres. She feels blessed to live at ArtsHub 118.