About Alyssa

Alyssa “Lyss” Cypher (they/them) is a community organizer, artist, and consultant in radical mental health and disability justice. Their art focuses on expressions of madness and neurodiversity, centering agency over our own narratives and stories, through the mediums of poetry, hand-cut collage, movement, and cross-stitch.

Alyssa is the founder of Inside Our Minds, a mutual aid collective that provides subsidized, community-based radical mental health programming to the Pittsburgh area. They are a facilitator at Write Pittsburgh, leading the Rainbow Writers and the Teen Council programs.

[Image of Alyssa, a white, non-binary person with red hair that is shaved to a fade on the sides and several inches long on top. They are smiling and wearing an orange suit with a white undershirt.]

Alyssa in an orange suit with a white undershirt and white shoes. They are smiling.

Radical Mental Health & Madness in Pittsburgh

A child sits on a sled and points at the moon in the night sky. Text reads "Tupelo Honey Teas. Hygge New Year. Saturday, January 8"
MovementOfferings

Workshop Offering: Cultivating an Intuitive Movement Practice

I will be offering a virtual workshop on intuitive movement as part of Tupelo Honey Tea and Write Pittsburgh’s Hygge New Year event on Saturday, January 8th. My workshop will begin at 1:15pm and run for one hour. The Hygge event overall runs from 10am – […]
by Alyssa Cypher
on Dec 30
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Two people and a dog walk inside a salt storage tunnel
Poetry

New Poem in Sledgehammer Lit

I haven’t published any new poetry in a while, so I’m excited to share “We live off the last stop of the T,” recently published in Sledgehammer Lit: https://www.sledgehammerlit.com/post/we-live-off-the-last-stop-of-the-t-by-lyss-cypher. I wrote this poem around two years ago, and I believe it originated during one of our […]
by Alyssa Cypher
on Nov 13
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Rainbow Writers and Write Pittsburgh logo
Offerings

Fall Workshop Offering for Teens – Rainbow Writers via Write Pittsburgh

Rainbow Writers, an intentional writing space for LGBTQ2IA+ teens (ages 13-18), will be returning this fall! Join us Mondays from 6-7pm via Zoom starting September 13th. Workshops are free and are operated on a drop-in basis (so don’t worry if you need to miss some). The […]
by Alyssa Cypher
on Sep 3
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