Linda Bass joins the Author Spotlight to discuss her memoir, A Tiny White Light

Author Name: Linda Bass

Book Title: A Tiny White Light

Book Genre: Memoir

Release Date: 1/20/26

Publisher: She Writes Press

Welcome, Linda!

First, thank you for this opportunity to reach your readers.

Of course! Please tell us a bit about your book.

A Tiny White Light: A Memoir of a Mind in Crisis is a candid memoir about the interior of my own psychotic episode and its origins in guilt, lost purpose, conflict between mothering and career, and the ambiguity in my relationship with my therapist. An overarching theme is my search for meaning, purpose, and my “rightful home”—the life I long to live, and ultimately it is about recognizing my own strength and resilience.

What drew you to write a memoir about this experience? What made you want to tell this particular story? What do you hope readers will gain or learn from reading about your experience?

When my brother was nineteen, he descended into paranoid schizophrenia. I was twenty, and since my parents were unable to help, I stepped up as much as I could. I was studying psychology, but this was my first up-close exposure to someone with mental illness. Despite trying, I felt helpless to make a difference, and when he committed an irrevocable act, I felt guilty, that I should have been able to save him.

Years later, I too succumbed to psychosis when my life was at a very low point. About a month before I developed delusions and hallucinations, I had a peak/transcendent experience, in which I felt “one with the world”—everything was connected and suffused with meaning. I was hypersensitive to sensations, felt as if my true self had just been born, and was filled with joy and awe. At the same time, I was demonstrably higher performing, expressing ideas that seemed to amaze others and that they thought I should share with others. At that time, I decided I wanted to write about that experience and some of the ideas that emerged. 

But underneath what people might think was mania was deep depression—my life had gone too far astray, was too difficult to bear, but there seemed to be no escape. Psychosis took me into an alternate reality, one with great (though imagined) purpose. Unlike some others’ experiences, it was not terrifying, but instead, like living inside a dream, and in retrospect, I found it fascinating. And it offered more material for my book! 

Not long after I was home from the hospital, when I confided that I’d experienced a psychotic episode to a friend of mine from graduate school, a psychotherapist herself, she surprised me by saying she wished she could have one too—to understand what it was like, that it might be helpful in working with her clients. Her comment transformed my feelings about writing the story—it would not just be a revelation of what was both an intriguing experience and at the same time my secret shame, but it might also serve a greater purpose. I might finally make that “significant contribution to the field” as one of my psychology professors had once predicted I would, not as a researcher, but by serving up my own experience as a case history that might be helpful to clinicians or as a story meaningful to anyone whose life had been touched directly or indirectly by mental illness. 

It was one thing to write the book and another to talk to others about it or, even more threatening, to let the whole world know by publishing it, and so I wrote an initial version of this book and then let it age in a drawer for many years. I was too ashamed and didn’t feel I could safely share it—too much stigma was attached. Later, when my kids were in school and I’d reentered the workforce, concern about my career kept me from revealing this part of my past. 

It is, of course, problematic that it is so difficult to share stories like this. How can we come to understand psychosis if we can’t even talk about it? It is not as rare an experience as many people might believe—recent estimates suggest that three to seven percent of the adult population will experience a psychotic episode at some point in their lives. Mental illness, along with its rippling impact on others, deserves more open discussion.

Once I retired, I rewrote the book. With no job and already living the life I had longed for, there was less risk involved, and publication seemed like a realistic possibility. I thought I could offer a unique view of the experience because of my masters in psychology,  and so I set out to depict the factors that contributed to my psychotic break as honestly and accurately as possible, without glossing over those things that were embarrassing to me. I also wanted to show that the content of the psychosis was meaningful, that it echoed my dreams, my brother’s experience, and even my therapist’s phobia (which he had inadvertently shared with me) as well as other internal preoccupations, that it wasn’t simply gobbledygook. I believe exploring psychotic content in therapy could be useful in identifying significant underlying issues and potentially with defining new therapeutic approaches.

Finally, I wanted to honor my brother by telling his story in addition to my own. While I couldn’t save him, I had managed to save myself, and I concluded that just maybe other lives might be saved through sharing my experience and showing it is possible not only to survive such an episode, but to go on to thrive and lead a meaningful life.

From your perspective, what’s the hardest thing about writing and researching? And what do you love most about it?

I feel plagued by word count and the need to cut. I’m lucky to be able to sit down and write profusely and I’m unlucky for the same reason—it’s hard to cut scenes or anecdotes once they’re already on paper. 

I also struggled with structure, whether to intertwine or alternate past experiences with present action, or whether to write the story chronologically. I chose the latter because I usually find switching back and forth between timelines disruptive to the overall thrust of stories, and I wanted readers to vicariously experience the gradual accrual of stresses that led to the psychosis. For this book, the problem with this choice was balancing a focus on how my brother’s experience disrupted my life and was formative in that way, while also introducing the reader to me, the protagonist. In part I, I might appear to be a bit player in my own life as his story rolls out, and yet for me his story was bigger than my own at that time, and so my taking a back seat still makes some sense.

What I love most about writing is capturing a feeling in a fresh way. Sometimes I feel my writing is ahead of me, that I’m learning from my own words, as if I’m channeling some higher version of myself that is ordinarily inaccessible. I love that feeling, the sense of surprise when one is privy to words that flow from somewhere that feels beyond self.

Any new writing projects in the works?

In addition to writing, I’m an artist. I especially enjoy painting oil portraits and attempting to capture likenesses as accurately as possible (just as in writing), but I also paint landscapes, still lifes, and animals. I also design and illustrate posters and greeting cards.

For my next writing projects, I am compiling a collection of my short stories into a book and also plan to write a novel or another memoir.

What was the last book you read? What did you think of it?

I attended a book event with Lily King who discussed her newest book Heart the Lover. It’s a story of love and loss, and I found it to be very moving, with well-drawn characters.

Where can readers find you?

My website is: lindabass.com, where readers can find a book summary, bio, excerpts from A Tiny White Light: A Memoir of a Mind in Crisis, news/events, contact information, as well as links to my Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts and my art website: lindabassart.com.

Publication Date: January 20, 2026.

My book launch event is Tuesday, January 27, 6:30–7:30, South Hadley Public Library, 2 Canal Street, South Hadley, MA.

I will be signing books on Saturday, January 24, 1:00–3:00, at Barnes & Noble, Mountain Farms, 335 Russell St, Hadley, MA

Thank you, Linda! A Tiny White Light is out NOW.

A Tiny White Light

Just after nineteen-year-old Linda’s family moves from a small Wisconsin town to the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of Los Angeles in 1967, her parents divorce, and she and her younger brother, Brian, must fend for themselves. Linda finds stability in academic pursuits and part-time work, but Brian quickly spirals—behaving erratically, landing in psychiatric hospitals and jails, and, finally, committing an irrevocable act. Plagued with guilt, Linda loses her sense of purpose, abandons a promising career in psychology, and finds herself in a life she never envisioned—poor, alcoholic, and an accidental parent in an unhappy marriage.

At her husband’s urging, Linda starts seeing a psychologist, Sam, who quickly becomes a touchstone for what she has lost: her sense of self. Feeling truly seen, she falls in love with Sam and believes he might return her feelings, but he gives mixed messages. The ambiguity, mingled with other overwhelming stresses, triggers her descent into a psychotic episode—one that echoes her dreams, Brian’s experience, and Sam’s own phobia.

Standing at the brink of self-destruction, Linda realizes she is at a turning point: She can continue stumbling down her brother’s path—or she can find her way back to herself and create the life she longs to live.

Author Bio:

Linda Bass holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA and a master’s degree in psychology from UC Berkeley. She worked in the workforce development field for thirty years, most recently as the executive director of a regional workforce board in Cambridge, MA. Now retired, she devotes her time to writing, painting, solving puzzles, reading, singing (to herself), enjoying friends and family, and feeling grateful for the life she has now. She currently lives in South Hadley, MA, and is working on a second book.