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 …
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 …
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, Last Dance, a collection of short stories, and her latest novel, Letters I’ll Never Send, is an own-voices mental health story. Dress Rehearsal, another short fiction piece, appears in the …
Dianna Gunn is a freelance marketing consultant, dark fantasy author, and an indie author community mentor. Dianna produces the Spoonie Authors Podcast and is also the curator of the Twitter writing chat #WeeknightWriters, which happens every Thursday, 7:00 p.m. EDT. Her novel, Moonshadow’s Champion, the second of the duology, will be released in October 2021. The …
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 …
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 …
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
This episode’s guest is Diana Pinguicha, author of the historical fantasy novel A Curse of Roses. Find out more about her at https://pinguicha.wordpress.com/ Thanks for listening to this episode of the Spoonie Authors Podcast! The Spoonie Authors Podcast is part of the Spoonie Authors Network, a community initiative devoted to sharing the stories of disabled … Continue reading
Editor’s note: Nicole’s piece was submitted on December 13, 2020 just after our holiday hiatus began. We are happy for it to start off our blog for 2021! Light spoilers ahead for The Happiest Christmas, Uncle Frank, and The Prom: The advertisements for The Happiest Season are everywhere. Maybe it’s because Instagram knows I’m queer, … Continue reading
This episode’s guest is Alechia Dow, author of The Sound of Stars. Find out more about her at https://www.alechiadow.com/ Thanks for listening to this episode of the Spoonie Authors Podcast! The Spoonie Authors Podcast is part of the Spoonie Authors Network, a community initiative devoted to sharing the stories of disabled authors and educating abled … Continue reading
If you’ve ever encountered me through video or in real life, the word most associated with my personality is “bubbly.” I love engaging with people and get energized by them. Making people laugh drives my joy. If you’re following me on Twitter, I’m also quite open about how I manage mental illness, such as agoraphobia … Continue reading
