Publishing & speaking
Justin McDermott · The Dream State Compass
For publishers, event organisers and people interested in bringing the work into conversation.
I’m a writer, artist and peer worker based in Victoria, Australia. My work grows from lived experience of voices, psychosis and recovery, alongside the ordinary relationships and creative practices that helped me rebuild a life. Through memoir, philosophy, painting and poetry, I explore how meaning shapes what we can see and do, and what we make possible for one another.
Discuss the manuscripts · Enquire about speaking
Download professional information (PDF, 1 page)
Read the memoir’s opening chapter (about 12 minutes) · Download the chapter (PDF, 9 pages)
See Justin in conversation
Watch the interview for a sense of Justin’s voice, perspective and approach.
Speaking topics
Listening through lived experience
For peer workers, practitioners and supporters. Explore ways to listen with curiosity while leaving room for different understandings.
Voice, Trust and Choice Under Compulsion
Drawing on lived experience and peer support practice, Justin explores how community treatment orders (CTOs) and tribunal hearings can affect trust, relationships and a person’s sense of agency. The talk considers how supporters can help people express their wishes, prepare for hearings and remain involved in decisions about their lives.
Meaning, creativity and ordinary life
For arts, community and lived-experience audiences. Explore writing and art alongside relationships, uncertainty and everyday life.
What makes another response possible?
For services and community groups. Consider how practical conditions and relationships can open new possibilities.
These are starting points for a talk, panel or reflective conversation. Please include the audience, purpose, proposed format and timing in your enquiry.
Five books, one connected inquiry
The project moves from the experience of one life into questions about meaning, agency, support and human possibility. Each book stands on its own. Dream State: The Storm Within is coming to Amazon on 31 October 2026. The four companion books are complete, unpublished manuscripts; reading samples and publishing enquiries are welcome.
Dream State: The Storm Within
Literary memoir. Voices, fear, wonder and the work of finding a way back, told through the life in which they happened.
Read about the memoir and view an excerpt
When Meaning Becomes Sovereign
Philosophy. How meaning comes to govern perception, identity and action, and what keeps it open to question.
Explore When Meaning Becomes Sovereign
Threshold Crossing
A model for investigation. How unusual experience may acquire perceived authority, and how a person’s available choices can narrow or reopen.
The Needs We Carry
Ethics and practice. What support owes to the person living its effects, and how need, power and responsibility can be negotiated.
The Humans We Become
Human philosophy. How relationships, stories, circumstances and institutions widen or restrict what people can become.
Readers on the work
“relocates complex experiences back into the domain of human experience rather than pathology.”
Dr Luis Gustavo Vechi · on When Meaning Becomes Sovereign
“Written with honesty, originality and wisdom”
Louisa D Pearce · on The Storm Within
Meet the person behind the work
My writing sits alongside senior peer-support and lived-experience work in public mental health. I bring the perspective of someone who has received support and now works alongside others, with curiosity about what helps people retain dignity and room to choose.
Read my biography · Watch the interview
Start a conversation
For publishing, manuscript samples, speaking or creative collaboration, send a few lines about what brought you here and what you have in mind.