Their obvious difference is psychiatric: Pamela is given a diagnoses of schizophrenia, and Carolyn becomes a psychiatrist. The two struggle throughout life to form unique and distinct identities, both with and without the other. Beneath jealousy, pleas for attention, resentment, and competition lies a loving story of sisterly connection only twins could truly understand and experience.

Their chapters are eloquently written, with each twin narrating her experience through significant life events, some parallel and others strikingly disparate. Spiro, M.D., is an autobiographical account of these twins: they are identical twins but clearly different from birth. The art of 'pamwagg,' which she only just started doing since 2008, may be viewed at her blog:, along with current writing.īorn in Washington, Wagner lived most of her life in Connecticut but has recently moved to Vermont.The book Divided Minds, by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Wagner is also a prolific self-taught artist. Her second book of poems, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS (title tentative) by Cavankerry Press will be released sometime in 2017. WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS IS HER FIRST BOOK OF POETRY, about mental illness.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, LA Weekly and Tikkun among other places. In 2005, she co-authored, with her twin sister, a psychiatrist, Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and their Journey through Schizophrenia (St Martin’s Press, 2005), which won the national NAMI Outstanding Literature Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. Despite having spent at least twelve years of her life in psychiatric units, she has won many awards, including a First Place in the 2001/2 International Poetry Competition sponsored by the BBC World Service. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, LAĪ writer and artist who lives with diagnoses of schizophrenia and narcolepsy, plus CNS Lyme disease, Pamela Spiro Wagner graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and attended medical school for one year.

A writer and artist who lives with diagnoses of schizophrenia and narcolepsy, plus CNS Lyme disease, Pamela Spiro Wagner graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and attended medical school for one year.

Divided Minds by Pamela Spiro Wagner