Disabled Voices Anthology

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Disabled Voices Anthology

Introduction by: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Written and illustrated by the Disabled community about the Disabled community in North America, Disabled Voices is an international anthology collection of short stories (both fiction and non-fiction), personal essay, poetry, and artwork. Featuring both new as well as established authors, Disabled Voices is comprised of submissions written by Canadian, American, and UK authors.
A first of its kind, Disabled Voices captures life as a Disabled person: from the bad and ugly, to the good and victorious, and anything in between. Likewise, some pieces may not fit the mainstream idea of what the Disabled community is. This is a must have book for members of the Disabled community, but it is also very necessary to bring awareness and understanding to readers of all kinds.

AUTHOR

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Winner of the 2012 Lambda Literary Award, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled femme writer, teacher and performer of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan, Roma and Irish ascent. The author of Bodymap, Love Cake and Consensual Genocide and the co-editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, her writing has been widely anthologized. She is the co-founder of the queer people of colour arts incubator Mangos With Chili, a lead artist with Sins Invalid and co-founder of Toronto’s Asian Arts Freedom School. In 2010 she was named one of the Feminist Press’ 40 Feminists Under 40 Shaping the Future. Her first memoir, Dirty River, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in fall 2015.

Reviews

Rebel Mountain Press has come up with some winners of late, bringing a voice to those who are not always heard in mainstream literature, including the recently published Disabled Voices Anthology. This collection is part of a burgeoning genre dubbed “Crip Lit.” Disabled Voices Anthology is filled with stories and artwork from people with varying disabilities, both visible and invisible, touching on subjects from autism, accessibility, substance use disorders, to living with unrelenting pain, plus many more. The anthology contains a mixture of poetry, fiction, art, and non-fiction created by 28 disabled writers, activists, and artists selected from Canada, the US, and the UK. The foreword is written by Toronto-based Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

Rebel Mountain Press has come up with some winners of late, bringing a voice to those who are not always heard in mainstream literature, including the recently published Disabled Voices Anthology is filled with stories and artwork from people with varying disabilities, both visible and invisible, touching on subjects from autism, accessibility, substance use disorders, to living with unrelenting pain, plus many more. The anthology contains a mixture of poetry, fiction, art, and non-fiction created by 28 disabled writers, activists, and artists selected from Canada, the US, and the UK. The foreword is written by Toronto-based Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, a disabled poet, performer and community activist of colour, who stresses the importance of hearing everyone’s reality, realities that are not always served up in everyday literature. The strength of Disabled Voices Anthology is its diverse mix of voices stemming from each contributor’s own unique life experiences and challenges. Margot Fedoruk, Ormsby Review

“Disabled Voicesis magical–It made me laugh and cry. It made me want to take to the streets in protest. But I also found community with people like me and those with other disability in its pages.”- A.H. Reaume, disabled writer and feminist activist.

“We need these stories and the spaces likeDisabled Voicesto create new narratives that imagine ourselves into Mad, Crip futures.”-Qwo-Li Driskill, author

“Finally: community realized through complexity and knowledge created by people who have for so long been effaced.” Alok V Menon, trans writer and performance artist