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 …
Leila Tualla is a Filipino-American poet and author. Leila’s books include a YA contemporary romance called Letters to Lenora and a memoir/poetry collection called Storm of Hope: God, Preeclampsia, Depression and me. Her poetry is featured in several mental health anthologies and she is currently working on a poetry collection based on Asian American stereotypes …
Jaecyn Boné is a disabled, queer, Asian American writer, and artist. Their days are filled with daydreams of a magical place called The Fearth, where mermaids, fairies, and pirates abound. They live in Billings, Montana, USA, with their spouse, two-year-old, and newborn baby and maybe a ghost or two. You can learn more about Jaecyn …
Wendy Kennar is a mother, writer, and former teacher. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications and anthologies, both in print and online. You can read more from Wendy at her website, where she writes about books, boys, and bodies (living with an invisible disability). You can also find Wendy on Instagram.
Nicole Lavigne has a BA in English and Theatre from the University of Ottawa. She still lives in Ottawa but considers all of Canada her home after bouncing across the country as a military brat during her childhood. She is a professional storyteller, published writer, Web & Logistics Coordinator for Can-Con, Co-Chair for the Ottawa …
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 …
Jen Desmarais is the creator of the sex education game Blush, and co-author of the upcoming Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers (Fall 2022), also to be published by Renaissance. Co-founder of JenEric Designs, she creates unique geeky crocheted items. Her blog, The Travelling TARDIS, was nominated for the Prix Aurora Awards for four years in a row …
Michelle Butler Hallett, she/her, is a history nerd and disabled person who writes fiction about violence, evil, love, and grace. Her 2016 novel This Marlowe was longlisted for the ReLit Award and the Dublin International Literary Award, and her first novel, Double-blind, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. You can follow Michelle …
Dianna Gunn is a freelance marketing consultant, dark fantasy author, and an indie author community mentor. Dianna produces the Spoonie Authors Podcast and is the curator of the Twitter writing chat #WeeknightWriters, which happens every Thursday, 7:00 p.m. EST. (Once a month, she hosts #SpoonieAuthChat on Sundays at 1 p.m. EST with great marketing-based topics!) …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Don’t like the podcast format? You can read the transcript further down on this page! About the author Leila Tualla is a Filipino-American poet and author. Leila’s books include a YA contemporary romance called Letters to Lenora and a memoir/poetry collection called Storm of Hope: God, Preeclampsia, Depression and me. Her poetry is featured in … Continue reading
Among those of us who are neurodivergent (ND) and/or who manage mental illness, the word lazy has been stamped on our foreheads, like a much unwanted label, by people who just don’t understand our experience. Many of my friends who have ADHD, for example, have had their executive dysfunction completely gaslit by family members, teachers, … Continue reading
Don’t like the podcast format? Scroll down to find the full transcript for this episode! Today we are joined by poet, novelist, and comics writer Mugabi Byenkya! Mugabi Byenkya is an award-winning writer, poet and occasional rapper. Mugabi was longlisted for the Babishai Niwe Poetry Award in 2015. His essays and poetry have been published in The … Continue reading
It’s not a realization that came to me easily or early on in my life as a chronic illness patient. It took me several years to finally recognize it and to see what had been in front of me all along. Not until I marked my submission tracker with that most depressing word, “Declined,” did … Continue reading
Sometimes you gotta learn things the hard way. Typically that refers to making the mistakes people tried to warn you about. In this case, learning the hard way meant having a concussion (two, actually) axed the coping skills that used to work for me and to finally learn some useful things about myself: 1) I was … Continue reading
Hi there. You’re new here. You and maybe one hundred forty-one million, five hundred thousand others. That’s a guess. An imperfect one, because the data is young and ever-changing and because lots of folks lived in this house before a brand-new Goldilocks broke in and started judging our food and lodgings. Too metaphorical? Probably. Let … Continue reading
Transcript below! Our first Spoonie Authors Podcast of the year introduces Jaecyn Boné, author of many short stories, co-founder of Limeoncello, and a novelist about to enter the query trenches. You can find out more about Jaecyn here! The Spoonie Authors Podcast is part of the Spoonie Authors Network, an initiative dedicated to building community … Continue reading
Worst trilogy ever, by the way. The actually happenings and behaviour during this COVID-19 pandemic would have been rejected by every publisher, I’m sure, for being so unrealistic. Yet, I also feel I need to apologize to the writer of JAWS. People really would put the economy over the lives of swimmers in shark-infested waters. … Continue reading
Once again, editors Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson are joining up for another multi-genre fiction anthology. Nothing Without Us, their first anthology, became a Prix Aurora Award finalist for Best Related Work and has so far been taught three times as part of a disability studies course at Trent University! For Nothing Without Us … Continue reading
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