Rob Wipond

Rob Wipond is a freelance investigative community-issues journalist and writer of creative nonfiction.

He began his career working in performance art and theatre. His stand-up political rock comedy with Allen Both, “When I’m Big”, ventured into such venues as Toronto’s famed El Mocambo and Bamboo Club. CBC Radio Sunday Showcase/Monday Night Playhouse produced his satirical play, “Gypsy Moth”.

His journalism has appeared in nearly a hundred outlets including The BMJ, Adbusters, Queens Quarterly, and MAD. He was for ten years a regular columnist and feature writer for Focus, and currently contributes investigative journalism to the science, psychiatry, and community website [Mad In America]().

His writing has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards, nine Western Magazine Awards, and five British Columbia Jack Webster Awards for journalism. He’s won WMAs for business, science, and public issues writing, and won two Websters for community reporting. Articles of Wipond’s have also landed on the front page of SlashDot and at the top of Reddit World News. In 2016-17, he co-founded and was a senior researcher and editor for Inner Compass Initiative and The Withdrawal Project, websites which provide information about psychiatric drugs and how to withdraw from them more safely. He is currently working on a book about people’s experiences of involuntary psychiatric interventions and the expanding use of mental health laws across North America.

He has also worked as an instructor in creative nonfiction and journalism at the University of Victoria and Royal Roads University.