We asked the many independent literary presses and magazines that make up our membership to share with us some of the literature they recommend reading in honor of Disability Pride Month, observed annually in July.
Poetry
This, Sisyphus by Brandon Courtney
YesYes Books | 2019
According to Justin Phillip Reed, “Courtney’s erotic, erosive soldier’s psalms enunciate the guilt of doing what one can with the awful gift of a human life in the aftermath of another’s destruction.”
Phantompains by Therese Estacion
Book*hug Press | 2021
This poetry collection, which takes inspiration from Filipino horror and folk tales, “is a visceral, imaginative collection exploring disability, grief and life by interweaving stark memories with dreamlike surrealism.”
Flare, Corona by Jeannine Hall Gailey
BOA Editions | 2023
Flare, Corona “paints a self-portrait of the layered ways that we prevail and persevere through illness and natural disaster.”
The Wild Language of Deer by Susan Glass
Slate Roof Press | 2021
According to Alison Luterman, this chapbook, “with its exquisite woodcuts and a poem in Braille translation, will subtly reorient your relationship to our world.”
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
Graywolf Press | 2019
A finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Kaminsky’s “astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?”
Only Bread, Only Light by Stephen Kuusisto
Copper Canyon Press | 2000
In his first poetry collection, Kuusisto “explores blindness and curiosity, loneliness and the found instruments of continuation.”
Switchback Books | 2023
This poetry collection “is a series of refrains on loss, gendered disability, community, alienation, productivity, value, and performativity.”
Switchback Books | 2008
According to Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, “Munson’s intriguing, kaleidoscopic poems transport the reader into a tough- and tender-hearted world of blood, illness, medical authoritarianism, and stubborn life force.”
Fifth Wheel Press | 2023
Traum/A is an “abecedarian catalogue of experimental, visual and prose poetry on the causes and symptoms of trauma.”
We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders by Phoebe Sparrow Wagner
CavanKerry Press | 2009
This collection features “poems written over the course of twenty-five years as the author struggled to live with a devastating mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia.”
Cyborg Detective by Jillian Weise
BOA Editions | 2019
Weise’s third collection of poetry “holds a magnifying glass to the marginalization and fetishization of disabled people while claiming space and pride for the people who already use technology and cybernetic implants every day.”
Nonfiction
Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness by Shahd Alshammari
Feminist Press | 2023
This hybrid memoir “revisits personal journals to slowly piece together a narrative of chronic illness—a moving account of survival, memory, loss, and hope.”
Cataloguing Pain by Allison Blevins
YesYes Books | 2023
In this memoir, Blevins “explores motherhood, sexuality, and queerness as it juxtaposes the author’s diagnosis of MS with her partner’s gender transition.”
Floppy: Tales of a Genetic Freak of Nature at the End of the World by Alyssa Graybeal
Red Hen Press | 2023
According to Rebecca Fish Ewan, in this memoir “Graybeal spins a richly imaged and often hilarious story from the fibers of her own quest for life while navigating the challenges of having a rare genetic disorder.”
The Truth about Things That Suck: and How to Make Them Suck Less by Mindy Henderson
Woodhall Press | 2022
This is “a book of wit and wisdom that encourages readers who are currently struggling to overcome an obstacle, or preparing to face one down the road.”
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc
Coach House Books | 2020
In this book, Leduc “looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.”
Halfway from Home by Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Split/Lip Press | 2022
In this essay collection, Montgomery “examines contemporary longing and desire, sorrow and ache, searching for how to build a home when human connection is disappearing.”
Bellevue Literary Press | 2020
In this extended lyric essay, Olstein “mines her lifelong experience with migraine to deliver a marvelously idiosyncratic cultural history of pain—how we experience, express, treat, and mistreat it.”
CavanKerry Press | 2007
This posthumously published memoir follows “one man’s journey through bone marrow transplantation, one of the most arduous and extraordinary medical interventions that some people are compelled to choose and endure.”
Your Hearts, Your Scars by Adina Talve-Goodman
Bellevue Literary Press | 2023
In this essay collection, published posthumously, Talve-Goodman “tells the story of her chronic illness and her youthful search for love and meaning, never forgetting that her adult life is tied to the loss of another person—the donor of her transplanted heart.”
Hot, Wet, and Shaking: How I Learned To Talk About Sex by Kaleigh Trace
Invisible Publishing | 2014
According to The Dialog, this book “fights the myths about sex and disability and starts discussions that are long overdue.”
Fiction
Feminist Press | 2022
According to Jamia Wilson, “Moore’s sharp and provocative voice adds much-needed complexity to the public discourse about the impact of COVID-19 on queer and disabled communities.”
Autumn House Press | 2023
This short fiction collection “is a celebration of the bond of devotion possible between humans and dogs, and it presents an intimate rendering of the lives we share.”
Literary Magazines
“Fall Risk” by Allison Blevins
SWWIM | 2020
This poem begins, “After the fall, I call out for my wife. I can’t cry. I can’t feel pain now.”
“In Light of a White Cane” by Naomi Cohn
Terrain.org | 2020
This essay begins, “It takes 198 steps to walk from my house to the little stub of Pearl Street. Summer days like this, no one sees my white cane, folded in my bag.”
“Pilgrim amid Spectres: A Craft Review of The Collected Schizophrenias” by Shannon Fandler
The Cincinnati Review | 2023
This review begins, “In her 1905 essay ‘The Decay of the Essay,’ Virginia Woolf grumbles about writing that begins ‘with a capital I.’”
“Scar” by Jeannine Hall Gailey
SWWIM | 2018
This poem begins, “The voice it was in the storm / in the fire in whirlwind / spoke to me and told me….”
ANMLY | 2017
According to editor Sarah Clark, “When I put out the call for work for Glitterbrain, what I wanted the most was realness, whatever that may mean. Because neurodiverse, queer, people of color are denied what is real.”
“Cripple Sex Manifesto” by torrin a. greathouse
The Hopkins Review | 2022
This poem begins, “Unbutton your tongues; / there are no metaphors here.”
One Art | 2022
This poem begins, “Honeycombing, the doctor says, /and for an instant, I let myself / rest in what I love about that word….”
“Dolphin Pearls” by Petra Kuppers
Dark Matter: Women Witnessing | 2017
This short story begins, “The dolphins played beneath the soaring arches of the intra-coastal bridge. They twined around one another, just a thin shell’s edge away from touch, and then lay on the surface for a breath, beak to beak, and felt the sun dry them.”
“To the Smoker on 72nd Street” by Jasmine Ledesma
Off Assignment | 2020
This letter begins, “I met you in the heat of the afternoon. The clouds were drowning in a blue-glass sky, and New York stretched on all around.”
The Cincinnati Review | 2022
This essay begins, “Flare, as in flare up, as in, sorry, I’m not in the mood tonight. As in, my ache has traveled from toe tip to hip and I can’t risk movement.”
“Ambulatory Wheelchair User” by Rita Maria Martinez
West Trestle Review | 2022
This poem begins, “Thank you, Gabe, for wheeling my / rebellious body amidst travelers scurrying / like frazzled ants at LAX….”
“To My Big-Haired Boss Who Made Me Come Out Door to Door” by Greg Marshall
Off Assignment | 2019
This letter begins, “I’ve always done voices at home: the robot sister from Small Wonder, Jane Pauley from Dateline, Karen Walker from Will & Grace.”
“Linguistic Threads” by Rahma Nur
Translated from Italian by Alta L. Price
Words Without Borders | 2017
This poem begins, “As you make headway / between the land where you were born / and the ground that took you in / a thread stretches to connect them / like an IV.”
“Everything’s Not Lost” by Ross Showalter
The Hopkins Review | 2023
This short story begins, “I only notice the two of them because they are the only people who don’t raise their hands when I ask the question I always ask at the beginning: ‘How many of you know someone who is deaf?’”
“Why We Need New Year’s Day and the Passage of Seasons” by Daniel Simpson
One Art | 2022
This poem begins, “Because we are iron in a smithy world / which heats and hammers us beyond self-recognition….”
“they write you feral” by A. A. Vincent
West Trestle Review | 2021
This poem begins, “how do i tell them i have survived / deeper gardens under snow & rain….”
Writing Ourselves / Mad and Writing Ourselves / Mad Part 2
ANMLY | 2021
According to editor Sarah Cavar, the poetry, fiction, photography, and artwork in this two-part folio celebrates “Mad creation, craft, and methodology” and “offers a third, collaborative option, in which we can bring our whole, multiple, unrecovered and anti-recovery selves to the table to tell the stories only we know how to tell.”
