Throughout this series, I hope to bring to light some of the tropes around disability in order to (1) improve the representation of disabled people and (2) provide writing tips for those of you who want to include disabled people in your stories. Today’s lesson is about The Crippled Sidekick. This is a common trope of disability, … Continue reading
Just to set the record straight, I’m not brave, okay? I live with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) and relapse-and-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). I can’t count the number of people who have called me brave. I always smile and nod when they say this, but the truth is that bravery has nothing to do with it. … Continue reading
Note: I use the word “crip” about myself as a way of reclaiming the language that has been used to oppress disabled people. As a queer person, I learned about the process of coming out at age 16. The first person I came out to was my mother. It was an incredibly challenging and emotional … Continue reading
Hey, spoonies, your humble SpAN editor here, to talk about an exciting call-for-submissions opportunity! 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the release of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. That book was instrumental in inviting us to see science, the inner soul, and the body in a whole new way. To mark this milestone, Renaissance press and editors … Continue reading
This weekend, I had the immense pleasure of being part of The Conference for Canadian Content in Speculative Arts and Literature—Can-Con, for short. I’ve been to conferences before, but always as a fan, attending panels and being a fanboy over authors I love. However, this conference was special to me. It was my first conference … Continue reading
I didn’t always like cosplay. In fact, for many, many years I thought people who did it were a bit odd. Then in September 2015, my friend Miriam encouraged my long-suffering husband Bruce and I to join her and her brother Mike that November for PopExpo ’15. She wanted us to cosplay as Doctor Who … Continue reading
I’m so excited to announce that several of our SpAN contributors (including myself) are going to be on a panel at Can-Con 2017 (the Conference on Canadian Content in Speculative Arts and Literature). The topic? Sex! Spooning with Spoonies: Disability and Sexuality—Disability is often represented as the antithesis of sexuality and disabled people are often … Continue reading
I am a fan. A lot of us disabled people are fans. We are already socially ostracised, so many of us don’t fear being stared at or judged. At the time of writing this post, I had just spent the weekend at Fan Expo Canada, a venue that I have attended for several years, to … Continue reading
The first piece of writing advice that I was given was: Write what you know. Throughout my twenty years as a writer, I’ve happily ignored that advice. I’ve written fantasy novels, horror stories, and countless short stories and poems. And throughout all of them, I wrote only what pleased me, what I felt called … Continue reading
