Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Praise for Live Through This
"The 16 essays and visuals that make up Live Through This plum the depths of out-of-control lives, examining how self-destruction functions as both a hindrance and a productive challenge. Unlike what Hollywood would like us to believe about them, the contributors – artists, writers, and musicians – are neither weak nor one-dimensional."
BITCH MAGAZINE, Fall '08
"Live Through This...[enacts a] scarred and gorgeous community."
MAKE/SHIFT MAGAZINE, Jen Cross, fall/winter 2008/2009
"[Live Through This] posits a hopeful message: that while the quirks and sensitivities of a creative mind often seem predisposed to depression, they are also the exact qualities that provide a special set of tools with which to find a way through the darkest moments."
BUST MAGAZINE by Emma Hamilton
"The 20 essayists, novelists, photographers, visual artists, cartoonists, musicians and burlesque performers of Live Through This testify to lives of survival – turning tears and tendencies toward mania, depression, and self-mutilation into powerful lessons."
CURVE MAGAZINE by Tania Hammidi, October 2008
"Women’s and cultural studies students, take note."
NOW TORONTO Review by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk
"Chicago's own Sabrina Chapadjiev edits this raw collection of art, photography, essays and stories in which several female artists free their fiercest emotions. From experiences such as abuse, depression and other self-destructive habits come courageous revelations of truth."
TODAY'S CHICAGO WOMAN
"We know the story of the brilliant woman who destroys herself. The woman artist who is... 'controversial while alive but sanctified in death.' In this powerful and unique collection edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev, we hear from nineteen writers, artists and thinkers who are alive and well – and indeed, often controversial..."
GO MAGAZINE Review by Joseph Keckler
"This powerful collection of voices provides new insight into the concept of self-destruction and, perhaps more importantly, offers hope to everyone who has felt these forces."
AFTERELLEN.COM by Heather A O'Neill
"Sabrina Chapadjiev’s anthology, Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction, strikes me in all ways as a carefully crafted object—which so few books are these days."
FEMINISTING.COM review by-Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters
"Captivating, concise, and humbling, Live Through This is easy to put down between pieces and become just as immersed upon picking it up again."
Yujean Park on FEMINIST REVIEW
"A kinda groundbreaking book... an interesting read... brings sexuality into the larger context of mental health, general well being and happiness in life."
LIVE GIRL REVIEW by Audacia Ray
"Many speak of making art as a way to inscribe their pain on something other than their bodies; art becomes solace, coping mechanism and path to redemption... inspiration, ultimately, is what this visceral book is about."
BAY WINDOWS review by Brian Jewell
"Live Through This is a collection of 19 essays by women artists who have walked across the hot coals of their own self-destructiveness. They are confessionals, cautionary tales, but mostly, I think, they are messages of sisterhood to those of us out there who struggle."
NEOVOX Review by Lorraine Berry
"The book is wonderful... I read it huddled in the corner of the subway, the book's blood red cover wrapped in a brown paper bag, eyes shifting from passenger to passenger, looking for the too-thin girl who knew..."
FICTION CIRCUS Review by S. Future - US Markets
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Bio
Sabrina Chap is a writer, performer and activist whose groundbreaking collection, 'Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction' is quickly becoming a fixture in the new mental health scene.
Showcase Reel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaYHUawxrXs&feature=youtu.be
A thought provoking and engaging speaker, Chap has spoken on art, creativity, gender and self-destruction in colleges, museums and writing centers in the US and abroad. She is able to tailor her presentations to fit a variety of student groups, including bookings by mental health collectives, gender studies, queer studies and writing centers.
She began her lecture and workshop facilitating skills in DIY festivals such as Ladyfests and the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. Chap is also a respected musician and performer who has toured nationally and internationally with her music, a unique brand of cabaret that brings her to burlesque and circus stages world-wide. Her ability to compel an audience as a trained performer, combined with the survival skills
learned through her focus on self-destruction, makes her heartfelt lectures and workshops a powerful and liberating experience for audiences.
Her work and brand of mental health activism has been featured in Bitch Magazine, the Advocate, Bust, KEXP, and the International Museum of Women. The Advocate stated, Live Through This delves deep into the psyches of poets, dancers, playwrights, and performers (including Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Kate Bornstein, and Margaret Cho) to reveal the forces that drive artists toward both passion and pain.
As a writer, her work has been featured in anthologies, Adbusters, Gathering of the Tribes and more. As a performer, she has been noted by the New Yorker for her rousing performances, and profiled as an artist to watch out for by Venus Zine. Curve Magazine said of her, Chap deserves to be a star.
All in all, Sabrina Chap is a unique brand of speaker rooted in DIY activism and mental health politics, while lecturing with the intensity of a passionate performer who captures the complexities on the compelling nature of both self-creation and self- destructive acts.
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