The journey of Cal High English teacher Regina Lyon’s husband through a psychiatric facility scandal called “The Chair and The Valley,” will be released on June 4 with the help of two Cal iQuest interns.
Seniors Fiona Xie and Ipshita Aggarwal have been working with Regina Lyon’s husband, Banning Lyon, since the beginning of the school year to help get his memoir published.
The iQuest interns worked behind the scenes promoting “The Chair and The Valley,” a memoir about Banning Lyon’s life and his experience at a psychiatric facility that turned out to be a giant medical scam. When the scam eventually came to light, it was considered to be the largest malpractice lawsuit in the history of the United States at that time.
“It was so big that Bill and Hillary Clinton invited him to speak in front of Congress,” Regina Lyon said of her husband’s story.
Banning Lyon first began writing the book as a way to cope with the PTSD from being at the psychiatric hospital. The book can be purchased in any retail book store next month or pre-ordered on Amazon.
“I’ve worked with my therapist for 13 years and the first couple of years she encouraged me to free write about my past experiences,” Banning Lyon said. “So I did and then put it away. It wasn’t really a book with a narrative. It was just my experience.”
Banning Lyon named the book “The Chair and the Valley” to help further deal with his stress from the hospital. During his time there, he would have to sit in a chair and stare at a wall for 10 to 12 hours each day.
Today, he is a backpacking tour guide for Yosemite National Park, so he compares the two to express his pain and healing.
“I wanted to take those two things and use them as contrast,” Banning Lyon said, “Both the chair that created such harm in my life and the valley which created a lot of healing for me.”
During the time Banning Lyon was working on the book, he enlisted the help of many people, including his wife, Regina Lyon, who has a major in creative writing and helped her husband revise his drafts.
“Before I came to work every day in the morning, he would print out all the pages that he’d worked on the day before, and I would give him editing feedback,” Regina Lyon said. “Then I would come home from work and do all the editing work.”
In addition to Regina Lyon, there were 3 agents: Meg Thompson, who helped him brainstorm ideas; Maria Shriver, a famous American journalist; and Jonathan Eig, The New York Times bestselling author of “King: A Life”.
Shriver first met Lyon, when he wrote a column in The New York Times in a section called Life Inspired. From there, she requested the manuscript from his agent, and that was how it became a big deal.
Banning Lyon got in touch with Eig, who was a reporter covering the lawsuit back in the ’90s, to get advice about possibly writing a book.
To help market his book, Lyon realized that he would need to use social media, and that was when his wife suggested he get some iQuest interns.
Beginning in August, Xie and Aggarwal began helping Banning Lyon market his book.
“The two interns spent the first semester learning about how books get online attention and what kinds of things he should be posting,” Regina Lyon said. “And then he would meet with them regularly to get feedback on what he should be doing.”
Banning Lyon has had little interest with social media as he uses it rarely and for the most part to catch up on current events.
“I knew that in all my research that I would ultimately, if I did get a book deal, have to promote somehow and do it very likely over social media,” Banning Lyon said. “So in that regard, Fiona and Ipshita have been a huge help to me.”
Xie first saw the internship through a spreadsheet that was part of the iQuest program. Seeing an opportunity to expand her knowledge and finding an interest in psychology, she applied and got accepted to work on the book.
“I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to broaden my horizons and also look at psychology marketing from a different perspective,” Xie said.
She also hopes to pursue a career in the medical field and thought she could get insight into the field through the book.
“Just having [Lyon’s book] as context really helped me navigate the middle of the healthcare system,” Xie said.
Aggarwal selected the internship because of her passion for reading books and an interest in marketing.
When the internship first started, the students spent hours researching how authors become successful promoting their book.
“I looked at two to three authors that [Banning Lyon] thought were similar to his genre,” Aggarwal said. “I would look at what colors they used, how many likes they got and stuff like that.”
Xie and Aggarwal spent a lot of time collaborating on and off campus with each other marketing the book.
“We talked sometimes over text, or in class because we have some classes together,” Xie said. “But we also call Mr. Lyon pretty frequently.”
Learning new ways to promote the book via social media, Xie and Aggarwal split the work in order to maximize their time efficiently.
“We would divide stuff,” Aggarwal said. “For like a week I was researching hashtags and [Xie] would be researching what colors we should be using.”
The interns and Banning Lyon feel very excited to publish the book after all the hard work that they have put into it.
