Joshua Wolf Shenk
Joshua Wolf Shenk is an essayist and the director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Time, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, among others, and in the national bestseller Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey. He is the author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, which was named one of the best books of 2005 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and has won awards from The Abraham Lincoln Institute, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the National Mental Health Association.
Shenk is a 2005-06 fellow in non-fiction literature at the New York Foundation for the Arts. His other honors include the Rosalynn Carter fellowship in mental health journalism at the Carter Center, the Frank Whiting scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Blue Mountain Center.
Shenk serves is a member of the advisory council to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the Maryland Center for the Book. He serves on the general council for Stories at the Moth and as a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He is also a member of the advisory council to the Shul of New York.
“Lincoln's story confounds those who see depression as a collection of symptoms to be eliminated. But it resonates with those who see suffering as a potential catalyst of emotional growth. "What man actually needs," the psychiatrist Victor Frankl argued,"is not a tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling of a worthwhile goal." Many believe that psychological health comes with the relief of distress. But Frankl proposed that all people-- and particularly those under some emotional weight-- need a purpose that will both draw on their talents and transcend their lives. For Lincoln, this sense of purpose was indeed the key that unlocked the gates of a mental prison. This doesn't mean his suffering went away. In fact, as his life became richer and more satisfying, his melancholy exerted a stronger pull. He now responded to that pull by tying it to his newly defined sense of purpose. From a place of trouble, he looked for meaning. He looked at imperfection and sought redemption.”