JD Derbyshire

JD Derbyshire (they/them) is a Vancouver-based comedian, theatre maker, writer, and mad activist whose work examines mental health, neurodiversity, queerness, and gender exploration. Derbyshire has toured Canada as a stand-up comedian and solo performer, has written more than 20 plays that have been produced by companies in Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver, and co-hosts the mental health podcast Mad Practice. Their play Certified, which served as partial inspiration for Mercy Gene, turns the audience into a mental health review board to determine Derbyshire’s sanity by the end of the show. Certified won two Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards in Vancouver and was described by The Georgia Straight as “a testament to a dynamic performance and delicate storytelling.” Mercy Gene is Derbyshire’s first novel.

Website: jdderbyshire.com

FESTIVAL BOOK

Mercy Gene

Think Maggie Nelson meets Hannah Gadsby.

Told in kaleidoscopic bursts of erratic recollections, daydreams, poetry, and lists, Mercy Gene is the powerful, genre-smashing debut work of auto-fiction by acclaimed writer, playwright, and comedian JD Derbyshire. Inspired by Derbyshire’s critically acclaimed and award-winning stage play, Certified, and anchored by protagonist Janice/Jan/JD, Mercy Gene is a beautiful, humorous, and sometimes brutal look at queerness, gender confusion, institutionalization, addiction, and abuse.

Through flashes of memory and imaginings, Derbyshire illustrates the intense and invisible “side effects” of psychiatric treatment and the unreliability of memory. In a stream-of-conscious narrative that provokes and consoles, eliciting tears and laughter at equal pace, Derbyshire re-examines a life of unspoken and repressed trauma. Between devastating bouts of depression, hilarious side-quests into the author’s dryly sardonic inner monologue, helpless moments at the mercy of their own psyche, and tour-de-force appearances by fictional versions of Miriam Toews and the late, great Margot Kidder, Derbyshire leads readers through a non-linear narrative to treatment, forgiveness, and acceptance.

GET THE BOOK

Owl’s Nest Books | Calgary Public Library (hard copy) | Calgary Public Library (ebook/audio) | Audio

BE CURIOUSER

• JD Derbyshire’s Mercy Gene is genre-busting auto-fiction. –Vancouver Sun
• Rallying cry: JD Derbyshire opens up. –Literary Review of Canada
• Derbyshire brings luscious prose to brilliant work of autofiction. –Atlantic Books