The First Martyr

Grateful Dead lore, biblical inconsistencies, and writing for all of me.

Hi all,

Today’s newsletter is to let you that that I had an essay published this morning in Earth & Altar Magazine . It’s called “The First Martyr”, and it’s about martyrdom, my father, and the impact of the Grateful Dead and their rarely-played-live song "St. Stephen" on my dissociative identity disorder.

This was a difficult piece to find the right home for. It’s an essay that’s a little about religion, a little about mental health and trauma, and a little about music. There was too much biblical tie-in for some places, and too much mental health tie-in for others. I’m grateful to editors Terry Stokes and Mary Grahame Hunter from Earth & Altar for their care with this piece.

Thank you for reading, truly.

With love,

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Sydney Hegele is the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essays on life with Dissociative Identity Disorder have appeared in Catapult and Electric Literature, and featured by Lithub, the Poetry Foundation, and Psychology Today. Their novel Bird Suit is forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in Spring 2024, and their essay collection Bad Kids is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2025. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada).