Linkspam: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Personal Essays...

[davidgillon]

"Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Personal Essays Editor Nicolette Barischoff Wants Your Essay Pitches!

As you know, the Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine is taking over the Destroy series from Lightspeed Magazine. The current plan is to run the Kickstarter for Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction in July 2017. The issue will be written and edited entirely by disabled people.

Personal Essays Editor Nicolette Barischoff is currently looking for short personal essays (ideally between 500-800 words) to run during the Kickstarter and eventually be included in the special issue. These pieces will explore the writer’s connection to disability and genre fiction in a deeply personal way, as a writer, an editor, an activist, or a consumer. We’re defining these terms (connection, genre) as broadly as possible to give you as much space as you need to tell your story.

Uncanny is offering a flat $15 on acceptance for these short essays. If you’re interested, please email Nicolette Barischoff and Editor-in-Chief/Nonfiction Editor Elsa Sjunneson-Henry at uncanny@uncannymagazine.com with your idea for an essay as soon as possible. If you have any questions, you may tweet them to @NBarischoff and @snarkbat. The deadline for completed essays is July 17th. We are particularly looking for disabled writers of color."

Comments

[sovay]

Unless they come back and read it as adults, with some sort of understanding of disability, they end up never realising it's a dystopia for disabled people and they keep on recommending it as a really good book for kids with a positive message about disability.

Real question: do disabled people who encounter the book young come back to it with the same kind of double vision, or do they flag earlier that there are problems with a narrative that, despite what I assume were its best intentions, categorizes them as "things"? [edit] I encountered things that were hella misogynist as a child and in some cases it took me decades to notice, but I don't know that this happens along all axes. Stuff I encountered as a child that was anti-Semitic, I generally noticed, even if the definition of "noticed" was sometimes "felt weird about and years later went aaaaagh."

[davidgillon]

That's a really good question. Most of my friends are 'born disabled, but didn't realise til adulthood' so don't fall into that category. I'll have to ask around to see who does and what they think.

[sovay]

'born disabled, but didn't realise til adulthood'

I hope people are writing about that, too. That sounds valuable to discuss, especially since it's not actually the same thing as becoming disabled as an adult.

I'll have to ask around to see who does and what they think.

If you can't sell this essay to Disabled People Destroy . . ., please get it published somewhere, because I really want to read it.