Comfort & Disturb (2025)
Writing can comfort us when we are going through different experiences and disturb our perceptions about mental health.
This collection, illustrated by Aberdeen-based Rosa Eisenberg, includes fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction rooted in authentic experience and visceral imagination.
Award Winners
Fiction
I Think You Should See Someone
Jenna Burns
This flash fiction piece obliquely explores the alienation felt when experiencing mental illness/during periods of mental ill health.
Jury Prize & Poetry
DSM – 5
Kirsty Crawford
This poem is a reflection on a difficult postpartum period, after multiple miscarriages, a traumatic birth and postnatal insomnia, depression and anxiety. It reflects through nature a path to find the way back.
Creative Nonfiction
Strangely Hungry
Angela Townsend
In this frank conversation with God about the persistence of anorexia, I am bewildered by the even more stubborn nature of mercy.
Shortlisted Entries
Fiction
The Ribs Opened Out
Anastasia Joyce
A piece of strange fiction about the unravelling world seen through grief. Set somewhere in the hills of County Kerry.
Deep Cleaning
Storm Lomax
This is a science-fiction piece inspired by my own experiences with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
Skin
Kim Campbell
Skin is a visceral story about a young girl’s fixation with skin — her fragile shield against a world that overwhelms her.
Poetry
Dog Days
Heather Chapman
The poem depicts how August’s typical sunny heat can disturb as well as comfort: in times of tension, the poem’s speaker finds a troubled comfort in imagining a cooler climate.
Trauma As Sheep
Christian Ward
This poem explores how a traumatic experience can be tamed through reaching out to mental health professionals, helping the speaker in the poem achieve a kind of comfort and peace.
Who We Speak To When Our Eyes Are Closed
Marc Brightside
This poem is based on my lived experience of insomnia; the loneliness and isolation of insomnia, and how insomnia allows the lingering spectres of the past to manifest themselves anew.
Creative Nonfiction
This Call
Peter Marshall
A recorded message begins phone calls from prisoners in Scotland, many of whom have mental health issues. The call will be disturbing to me but I must find the strength to offer comfort.
Death Disco
Kirsty Crawford
An essay on postpartum mental health disturbances and the comfort of the uncanny. A reflection on the similar experiences of teenage years and barely recognising myself again in the postpartum aftermath.
School Milk 1960
Malcolm Duckworth
A violent incident in the early days of my school that shaped my attitude over the next many years. Initially a scared and stuttering child to transformation to resilience, compassion and the world of rescue.
Me, Myself and I
Marie McLoughlin
Living with DID is like existing in a fragmented reality. With time, support and self-acceptance, healing begins. Therapy untangles the chaos giving voice to parts within.
Comfort & Disturb
About the Illustrator
Rosa Eisenberg is an illustrator, creative arts facilitator and mental health nurse based in Aberdeen. She has lived/living experience of mental health distress and creativity has been a crucial part of her recovery. Both illustration and mental health care require an understanding and appreciation of narratives. The connection between individual stories, the narratives people live by or have forced upon them and how these are understood and expressed, inspire her work.
rosaeisenbergillustration.com
@rosa.e.illustration
About the Writers
Peter Marshall
Peter Marshall has struggled with his mental health throughout his adult life. Six years ago, he asked Art Angel in Dundee for help. Their creative writing group encouraged him to express emotions in ways he never knew possible. Now, he scribbles prose and poems every day. Life isn’t on pause.
Jenna Burns
Jenna’s writing inspirations include Pat Barker, Sarah Waters and Mary Renault. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in New Flash Fiction Review and Causeway/Cabhsair: A Magazine of Irish and Scottish writing. She is currently working on her debut novel.
Kirsty Crawford
Kirsty Crawford is a conservationist, writer and community engagement manager. She has a BA in Creative Writing and an MSc in Wildlife Biology and is dedicated to exploring creative and collaborative crossovers between science and poetry. She was recently commended in the Magma Poetry Competition and has been published in Poetry Scotland, Motherlore, and Meniscus Journal plus featured in anthology collections by Speculative Books and Motherhood Uncensored.
Malcolm Duckworth
Poverty and a violent inner-city school led to a protective resilience moderated with compassion and ultimately a degree, three professions and twenty-five years in mountain rescue. A prize-winning published poem plus family pressure to write a memoir has combined to stimulate a strong creative momentum across poetry, prose and art.
Anastasia Joyce
Anastasia Joyce is a writer, aerialist and storyteller living in Edinburgh, and currently working on her first collection of short stories. She is invested in storytelling as an essential way to challenge dystopic narratives of the future and has written a play about the digital surveillance of migrants in the UK.
Heather Chapman
Heather is a Durham University student. She was a 2023 Foyle Young Poet, was shortlisted for the 2024-5 Poetry Wales Award, and won the 2025 Hive Young Writers Competition. Her work is published in The Garlic Press, Bloodletter and Carmen et Error. She likes vampires, sestinas and Edward II.
Marie Mcloughlin
Marie Mcloughlin is a devoted mother and grandmother who champions mental health awareness. Drawing from her lived experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder, she writes with honesty and hope. Her work encourages understanding, resilience, and compassion, helping others navigate their own journeys toward healing and self-acceptance.
Storm Lomax
Storm Lomax is a fantasy and sci-fi author from Larbert, Scotland. Her work has been published in The Metaworker Literary Magazine and Freedom Fiction. Her debut novel, Wrath of the Never Queen, is a standalone fantasy romance.
Angela Townsend
Angela Townsend works for a cat sanctuary. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, The Iowa Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Witness, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her poet mother is her best friend.
Kim Campbell
Kim Campbell is a Clinical Psychologist working in the NHS. She began writing in early 2025 after enrolling in creative writing classes; pursuing a long-held passion she finally decided to explore. Skin marks her first venture into literary competitions and publication.
Marc Brightside
Marc Brightside is a UK poet whose work has been featured in respected outlets both nationally and internationally, online and in print, with his work characterised by darkness interspersed with humour and introspection. His collections Keep it in the Family and Personal Impersonal were published in 2017 and 2020 respectively.