H. E. Casson (they/them) is a queer poet and performer whose words have been shared by Cast of Wonders, Lunate, The Quilliad, Serotonin, and Taco Bell Quarterly—among others. They are a Best of the Net nominee and have been selected for the Best Indie Speculative Fiction 2020 anthology. H. E.’s voice can be heard in the Moonbase Theta Out and …
Born on the prairies, Stephen Graham King has since traded the big sky for the big city and now lives in Toronto. His first book, Just Breathe, tells the blunt, funny, and uncompromising story of his three-year battle with metastatic synovial sarcoma. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in the anthologies North of Infinity …
Christina Robins lives in Yellowknife, NWT, in the sub-arctic with her chef husband and five rescue cats. Her writing is about women who don’t always follow the rules society has set out. Christina wants her writing to encourage conversations about love, life, and how women survive in a world that bases their self-worth on whether they …
Nicole Zelniker (she/her) is a writer, activist, and podcast producer at The Nasiona. Nicole is also the author of Mixed, a non-fiction book about race and mixed-race families, and Last Dance, a collection of short stories. Dress Rehearsal, another short fiction piece, appears in the award-nominated Nothing Without Us anthology. You can check out the rest of …
Jamieson Wolf is an award-winning, number one bestselling author of over sixty books and writer of Two Steps at a Time, a blog about having multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. In 2019, he released his gripping memoir, Little Yellow Magnet, followed by Love and Lemonade (the third book in the Lemonade Series), and his short story, The Descent, appears in …
How is it already December in a year when March alone felt like it lasted a decade? But it has arrived and with it, time to review what happened over the past 12 months! There have been some major changes to the SpAN over this span (not sorry), and the biggest being that Canadian fantasy …
Derek Newman-Stille is the nine-time Prix Aurora Award winning creator of Speculating Canada. They are completing their PhD at Trent University, researching representations of disability in Canadian speculative fiction. Derek is the anthology editor of Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales From the Margins and the Prix Aurora Award nominated We Shall Be Monsters. Derek has published in fora …
Despite her day job as a bureaucrat, April Laramey is an artist and a writer who dabbles in photography, spends too much time on the internet, paints, and occasionally gets some exercise. Her favourite colour is green, she wants to work in a bookstore when she grows up, and when she dies she wants her tombstone …
Dorothy Ellen Palmer is a disabled senior writer, retired English/Drama teacher, improv coach and union activist. Her new adoption-disability memoir, Falling for Myself, (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019), is acclaimed by The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, and Readers Digest. Longlisted for the ReLit Award, her novel, When Fenelon Falls, (Coach House, 2010), features a disabled teen in the …
Editor’s note: The last twelve months (and counting) of living during a global pandemic has had an affect on us Spoonies, so I thought I would do a six-week series, asking some of our contributing authors the same questions about how they are managing spoons, one year later. This week’s featured author: H.E. Casson SpAN … Continue reading
This week’s episode of the Spoonie Authors Podcast features debut author Elissa Grossell Dickey. Elissa Grossell Dickey is a former journalist who now works in higher education communications. Stories have always been a big part of Elissa’s life—from getting lost in a book as a child to now reading bedtime stories to her kids. As a columnist … Continue reading
I loved Killjoys. It was one of my favourite science-fiction TV shows in recent years. I loved the character, the dialogue, and the worldbuilding. But one small thing always irked me. One of the main settings is a ship named Lucy, after the AI. And it’s a nifty ship design. But it has two levels … Continue reading
Traditional publishing says it wants diverse voices but when presented with them, they either tone them down to be more acceptable to the neurotypicals, or they make them so ridiculous and centre the neurotypicals, or worse, when speaking of POC, they center whiteness. I am very proud of a novel I wrote, which I have … Continue reading
Mild spoilers for the movie Soul ahead: Everyone is talking about Soul. The Pixar movie, released Dec. 25, 2020, is the first Black-led Pixar movie in the company’s 25 years of making films. It’s been lauded by critics for its messaging and direction, as well as criticized for its depictions of Blackness, mainly the fact … Continue reading
I spent 2014 in an acute state of fear. Yeah, I know that seems hyperbolic, but I was quite terrified. The chronic pain I had been experiencing from the neuropathy of fibromyalgia had levelled up to a state where it felt like someone had injected several areas of my body with burning hot, vibrating curling … Continue reading
The latest episode of the Spoonie Authors Podcast features author, editor, and book coach Mary Kit Caelsto! Mary Kit Caelsto never grew out of the phase of being a “horse crazy girl”. Though she’s now over 40, she’s finally fulfilling her dream of writing equestrian books for others who haven’t grown out of being “horse … Continue reading
During 2020, I wrote one novel at 101,350 words, another at 63,026 words, and a novella at 13,000 words — and I still felt like I could have done more. Last weekend, I finished a nonfiction piece that had taken me over a week to write and painted a 36″ x 18″ canvas, yet I … Continue reading
There’s a decent chance that, in the last year, you’ve had to hang with folks virtually. Perhaps it was a business meeting, a class, or your family’s holiday shindig. As a writer, you might have done a book launch, a conference, a poetry slam, or a reading. We’re all communicating in new ways and my … Continue reading
