Griffiths has contributed to cultural events including the Adelaide Festival of Ideas,[3] the More Than Us conference with David Abram and Scottish artists Dalziel + Scullion;[4] the Royal Academy with artists Ackroyd & Harvey;[5] the International Sacred Arts Festival in Delhi[6] and has been a part of the popular Radiolab podcasts.
[a] The book describes an odyssey to wildernesses of earth, ice, water, air and fire, exploring the connection between human society and wild lands.
[17] The Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture reads from Wild during their documentary for their album Angles, and comments: "Jay Griffiths's works are original, inspiring and dare you to search beyond the accepted norm.
"[18] In April 2011, Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien posted a recommendation of Wild on the band's blog, stating that it is "an astonishing piece of writing " and that "it was exactly what I needed to read".
[25] Wild was successful in Australia where it received positive reviews in the Sydney Morning Herald, described by Bruce Elder as "The best book I read all year".
[26] During an interview about the experiences discussed in Wild, Griffiths said, "To my mind, at worst, the West operates a kind of 'intellectual apartheid' – the idea that our way of thinking is the only one.
Griffiths explores the artist's childhood polio, her devastating accident and her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, painting a vivid picture of passion, grief and transcendence.
Andrew Soloman in the New York Times described it as "Almost shockingly beautiful, a profoundly felt, deeply thought, fiercely argued examination of childhood...
[30] Joanna Kavenna in Literary Review wrote "Kith is an extended paean to something that has been lost, and a bold protest against the forces that suppress and control.
[31] While the review in The Guardian comments that Kith is at its centre "a lament for the English countryside and an expression of a very English Romanticism"; it describes the liking for Romanticism in the book as too easily descending into navel-gazing; objects to Griffiths' "reactionary ideology" to modern childhood; and argues that there is no real distinction between childscape and the domain of adults.
Stephanie Merritt in the Observer explains the title "For Griffiths, a profoundly poetic writer, her 'tristimania' (the 18th-century word she prefers to capture the precise combination of mania and melancholy in a mixed-state bipolar episode) is a condition steeped in metaphorical significance.
[34][35] It was John Burnside's Book of the Year in the New Statesman, where he wrote: "Jay Griffiths is one of the most perceptive and lyrical writers working today; she also brings deep learning and immense moral courage to Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression (Hamish Hamilton), an elegant and inspiring study of a condition shared by many who feel obliged to conceal their pain.
[36] Also in the New Statesman Marina Benjamin wrote "Tristimania is an education in the history, mythology and poetics of madness, in all its wildness and glaring neon.
Griffiths is a high-wire writer who performs the difficult trick of taking you into the depths of her madness while managing to remain a completely reliable guide.
Griffiths's subtle point is that in madness we live inside metaphors that offer a parallel understanding of what is real that is no less valid than any other, only less tenable.
"[37] Horatio Clare in the Daily Telegraph wrote "Griffiths's ferocious, exploratory intellect makes her book shine...