Kevin Rivoli, The Citizen
Auburn author, former model, releases fourth book
“Auburn author Jacqueline Cioffa has released her fourth book, “The Shape of Us.”
A collection of essays and poems, the book celebrates the complexities and authentic beauty of everyday women, Cioffa said in a news release.
Subjects include complex mother-daughter relationships, sexual and physical abuse, body shaming, insecurities, self-worth and complicated friendships. The book also celebrates the empowerment and admiration of “the delightful and dirty business of being female.”
“Self-discovery, self-love and pearls of wisdom only discovered after a life in the trenches of modeling, fame, aging and a nervous breakdown,” she said.” – The Citizen
Unity House Spirit Newsletter – An Evening of Celebration
An Auburn native, Jackie is a champion of women’s rights and a staunch advocate of mental health awareness, especially timely right now. A celebrity makeup artist and an international model for 17 years, Jackie was living in New York City when her life and identity were forever changed, altered by a psychotic episode and a diagnosis of manic depression. Her memoir about her mental health journey, The Red Bench: A Descent and Ascent into Madness, has received critical acclaim. Living with bipolar disorder, Jackie believes passionately in using her voice to advocate and inspire others.
Unity House’s Annual Board & Award Dinner
Unity House of Cayuga County to hold annual award dinner
“The event will include guest speaker Jacqueline Cioffa, an Auburn native who champions women’s rights and advocates for mental health awareness after a career as a celebrity makeup artist and international model. Her memoir about her mental health journey, “The Red Bench,” has received critical acclaim.” – The Citizen
Letter: Show more respect for fellow humans
“Human connection, and how we are remembered, is the beautiful lesson. That is the only currency we leave behind. Choose it wisely.” – The Citizen
Former Model Finds Beauty in Survival, Sanity, & Imperfections
By bp Magazine
International fashion model, makeup artist to celebs, author, and advocate—Jacqueline Cioffa has done it all. She reflects on her unconventional journey and her struggle to put her life back together after a “manic breakdown.”
Available Now on Amazon !!!
“The Shape of Us” Former Model Writes Fourth Book
As Seen on Bridge Street via Skype
“A Feminist Extravaganza” features the extraordinarily talented author & mental health advocate Jackie Cioffa with Auburn Public Theater
Finger Lakes Daily News with Steve Penstone
Jackie Cioffa’s 4th book, entitled The Shape of Us, is a collection of poems and essays dedicated to women she calls the empowered sisters of her soul.
‘The Shape of Us’ author Jacqueline Cioffa via Skype on Good Day Rochester
The Auburn author is discussing her new book, “The Shape of Us”, which celebrates the beauty of everyday women.
Jackie Cioffa talks with Dan Preston about her new book that is out today “The Shape Of Us” Classic Hits 99.3
Photo Ed Helinski
“The Shape of Us” on Classic Hits 99.3 – Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/993classichits/videos/304787697155613/?vh=e&d=n
From Bridge Street TV: ‘Auburn Public Theater Hosts “A Feminist Extravaganza”
A FEMINIST EXTRAVAGANZA We Should All Be Feminists An Evening of Wild Feminist Readings at Auburn Public Theater
In celebration of the 2020 Centennial for Women’s Suffrage, Auburn Public Theater is proud to present two nights of feminist readings & performances from some of the most wildly talented female writers & performing artists, both locally and regionally in CNY.
The Mighty: How My Mother Stands by Me Through Life With Bipolar Disorder
Rochester in Focus: Author shares her story of mental illness
SS: The Manic Mind (Episode 2: Part 2) Soul-Full Sessions with Guest Author Jackie Cioffa
Listen on Apple Podcasts Part 2 of a captivating conversation with Jackie Cioffa about what brought her to The Red Bench (literally and figuratively), the stigma around mental illness and what we can do to foster micro-moments of joy in our lives.
Soul-Full Sessions: The Manic Mind (Episode 2: Part 1) with Guest Author Jackie Cioffa
Why Writing Your Truth Is an Effective Marketing Strategy by Guest @JackieCioffa with Bad RedHead Media for #NaNoProMo 2019
‘Red Bench’ author on mental health/modeling career
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In recognition of this, we’re joined in-studio by author and model Jackie Cioffa.
Her book, “The Red Bench,” chronicles her modeling career, managing mental illness and how it has affected her life. – Good Day Rochester with Norma Holland
CNY Native Pens Memoir on Being a Model, Living With Bipolar Disorder
By Briana Smith, Spectrum News
said. “I just want people who may be alone and suffering through this, [to know] there is help.”
‘It doesn’t discriminate’: Auburn native’s third book details mental illness with The Citizen
Cioffa said she hopes her honesty helps others feel like they have permission to share their own
“It’s my gift and everybody can take what they need from it,” she said. “My goal is for people to not feel so alone inside the illness.” – “The Red Bench,” Jacqueline Cioffa
As Seen On Bridge Street
Jacqueline Cioffa’s Advance Review of The Lithium Chronicles: Volume One by Nicole Lyons
“Nicole Lyons is one of the most exciting, vital poets of our generation.
THE LITHIUM CHRONICLES is her most ambitious and brazen work to date, and she delivers above and beyond. Nicole’s ability to delve deep into the human psyche, unapologetic, is her gift to the world. Penning a full range of raw, honest, rage and brutal emotion in six lines is her mastery and magic.”
Finger Lakes News Radio on WAUB Morning News Steve spoke with author Jackie Cioffa about her anticipated book release, THE RED BENCH and raising mental health awareness via @FLNewsRadio
March 1, 2019 Heartstrings: A Woman’s Writing Workshop with Jacqueline Cioffa hosted by Auburn Public Theater
“Writing, good writing begins with the most honest, painful, sincere, sensual, scary and absurd memories. Stellar writing must start from a sacred place of truth, examining both the dark and the light. Women today have much to say, so many vital, important life lessons to impart with the world.” – Jacqueline Cioffa
September 2018 Top 5: Jacqueline Cioffa, Author http://www.iwanttobeher.com/top-5-jacqueline-cioffa-author/ via @iwanttobeher
July 2018 – New York’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction
“In New York’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction, New York’s most promising up-and-coming authors have the chance to share their own words. Covering a wide array of genres and topics, these young talents will amaze you. Containing one essay per writer, this anthology is a compelling introduction to the great wordsmiths of tomorrow.” – Z Publishing House
Pleased to have my essay, “Good Stock,” featured in New York’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction.
April 2018 – Fingers and Bones: A Poem
Guest Post @ https://otvmagazine.com/fingers-bones-poem/
Human, did you really ever think time was free?
That you could come and go as you please, that death was merely someone else’s walking dream.
Please place my ashes in the Mason jar mixed with my fuck ups, monumental errors, bad judgment, arrogance, ego, and greed when my time has finished.
Open the lid and throw all of the messiness and heaviness onto the wind.
Make sure it’s a strong breeze and golden hour, pink ombre summer’s eve.
Do not leave one speckle or trace of my existence inside, not one grain of dust or woeful sorrow to linger and wallow.
Let my time go when the jar grows full to the brim.
The beauty I leave behind is not mine to claim but the pure joy and lightness of love I shared and gifted away.
I cannot presume to know if my life made any difference.
How reckless and foolish would that be.
Time expands for the future legacy and all the beauty that is to come.
I am, after all at best, my strengths and faults soon forgotten.
December 2017 – #BOOKREVIEW – GEORGIA PINE BY JACQUELINE CIOFFA @ Bee Halton
Looking back now “Georgia Pine” is a story about loss. Loss in general but mostly the loss of very close people. I believe that is one of the most scarring experiences in a person’s life. It is a little like losing a piece of yourself and I suspect the way you deal with that determines what sort of person you become. However, Jacqueline Cioffa deals with this issue in an enormously compassionate way. Her characters experience pain fully but they do not give up. They find a way to make something out of that pain in sometimes rather peculiar ways. But that is the charm of the book.
August 2017 – Interview : Stories of Hope @ David Susman
You can have a mental illness and still make a positive impact on the world, in spite of the huge challenges. Living with mental illness does not define a whole person, and with the correct medicine, support and coping skills, life can be filled with accomplishments, purpose and happiness despite the enormous challenges and setbacks.
15 May 2017 – Guest Post @ Open Thought Vortex
Those who live on in our minds, those ones we can hear eyes closed, are the familiar bonds that can never be broken or diffused. I’m a mutt, Black Irish, German with a pinch of Italian thrown in. I know this because I have always been curious about where I came from, and more specifically the people I came from. Family is heavy sometimes like the two tons of butter my grandmother’s father used to make his baked goods.
15 February 2017 – Featured Writer @ Writing & Wellness
Some of my best ideas come when I’m outside in nature, walking, on an exercise bike, listening to music or observing my surroundings.
November 2016 – Author Interview @ Indie Book Promo
Write the truth, from the heart. Write because you love it, you may never be a famous author. Publishing is hard work and overwhelming at times, but never let anyone squash your dreams.
February 2016 – Throwback Poetry @ Mary Rowen
Thirty years later, my mom pulls out the newsletter I’d long forgotten. She’d tucked it away in a drawer for safekeeping, perhaps with a foresight I didn’t have back then. I’d hightailed it, traveled the globe, the gypsy desperate to expand my horizons and my own Mind’s Eye, only to return home again.
January 2016 – The Video Exchange @ Visionary Woman
Video Exchange, the place of connecting with an expert commentator who can answer the questions you desire to know. No subject is off limits! Everything from loving your spouse to loving yourself and all subjects in-between are here for us to answer.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://otvmagazine.com/2016/01/22/the-ninth-planet/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]January 2016 – The Ninth Planet @ On the Verge[/button]
I don’t cry anymore, media men. Anchorman, you’ve washed up all my tears with your free-for-all, show it all, bad taste charade
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://haphazardcoffee.com/2015/12/24/wake-me-im-dead-dreaming-by-jacqueline-cioffa/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]December 2015 – Wake Me, I’m Dead Dreaming @ Organic Coffee[/button]
I hate you, I despise you with the bitter guts and boiling blood that festers inside; It’s all a waking dream and I’m suffocating; Where, so where do I place the fear I carry so heavy too heavy to mind …
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://femininecollective.com/pattern-interrupt/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]November 2015 – Pattern Interrupt @ Feminine Collective[/button]
Years passed until one day I stopped, running, and actually gave a damn about someone other than me. The day I was down on my luck and couldn’t offer him a quarter, I finally understood the shame from his side.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://www.areafrenchman.com/survivor/how-area-frenchman-learned-to-mind-his-own-triggers-from-author-jackie-cioffa/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]November 2015 – Author Interview @ Area Frenchman[/button]
Do you realize the danger of putting your competitive needs ahead of someone’s mental well-being? You are not playing games. This is serious business, you are dealing with people lives.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”https://thewritinglifeeparker.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/author-interview-jackie-cioffa/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]November 2015 – Author Interview @ The Writing Life[/button]
I made a pact to write everyday, stream of consciousness. The Red Bench was a coping mechanism, a way to hold onto to hope, and frankly to stay alive.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://femininecollective.com/dances-new-old-beginnings/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]November 2015 – Do Over Dances and New Old Beginnings @ Feminine Collective[/button]
How was your day? Inside those four simple words lies the entire lifetime of one soul.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://thelithiumchronicles.org/2015/10/07/mindtrip-crossfire-humanity-edition-mental-illness-massacres-misinformation/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]October 2015 – Mind Trip Crossfire : Humanity Edition @ Lithium Chronicles[/button]
Who is to blame for the massacres, the sick individuals who walk into a school or movie theatre with mass arsenals readily available? I blame every single one of you. And myself.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://femininecollective.com/seven-shades-sick/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]September 2015 – Seven Shades of Sick @ Feminine Collective[/button]
I am in the throes of psychosis, the broken point. Balancing on an invisible barbwire tightrope barefoot bloodied and blistered. I am scorching star stuff too far and away floating free fall above solid ground. One foot firmly rooted to the earth while the other tests the waters dipping my toes into the swirling madness.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://femininecollective.com/sweet-child-mine/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]August 2015 – Sweet Child of Mine @ Feminine Collective[/button]
It’ll be over before I can take in and fully grasp one human breath. Maybe you could add a pause button, please, so I might be more than some other being’s fading memory? Perhaps I can stay down there, just a little while longer? Not forever, no, I know. I understand. Just long enough, enough time so I can get it.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://rachelintheoc.com/2015/08/stomping-ground/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]August 2015 – Stomping Ground @ Rachel Thompson’s Blog[/button]
Who is this person? She doesn’t recognize her at all. Oh yeah, She, The Master of Pretending. To live, to exist in the dark requires discipline. She was tenacious, loyal, and loved hating herself. It was what she knew, the one emotion she understood intimately.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”https://hastywords.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/bereal-jacqueline-cioffa/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]August 2015 – #BeReal @ Hasty Words[/button]
Being real has little to do with how you’d like to be perceived and everything to do with who you are naked and exposed.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://femininecollective.com/youre-skinny-dont-problems/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]July 2015 – You’re Skinny You Don’t Have Any Problems @ Feminine Collective[/button]
As Freud says, there are only two things. “There’s denial, and then there’s insanity.” And my life is lived somewhere in the middle. So, today I make this promise. I promise to smile at strangers, to allow myself some happiness, to chip away at the brick that has become my shell, and to hope.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://femininecollective.com/house-mirrors-personal-journey-self/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]July 2015 – House of Mirrors @ Feminine Collective[/button]
All any of us wants is to be seen, really looked in the eye and acknowledged. Today, I’m hanging all the right mirrors in my house. Whether beveled, glass, wood, antique or modern, I’ll make sure they are a correct representation of who I am and where I come from and where I’d like to go. I’ll make sure that each time I look into them, I recognize my face looking back.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://thelithiumchronicles.org/2015/05/14/mental-health-warrior-jacqueline-cioffa/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]May 2015 – The Fault Line @ The Lithium Chronicles[/button]
Praying for normal, begging and weeping for a sliver of routine. My beautiful, chaotic brain is burning. I see the words but cannot will the neurons to speak them from my mouth. I fear they will abandon me, the words, that is the fate waiting down the road. The fault line.
[button style=”btn-success” url=”http://stigmafighters.com/stigma-fighters-jacqueline-cioffa/” target=”_blank” size=”btn-lg”]March 2015 – It Hurts, Ya’ Know @ Stigma Fighters[/button]
Mental Illness is the agonizing, paralyzing, uncompromising, anxiety-ridden, paranoid, numbing fear, night terrors in the daytime. It is the hideous, unforgiving, relentless, tedious, Ad nauseam unknown. Mental Illness is the unwanted safety net that stops me from believing I can fly.