After our rave review of Cindy Rodriguez’s debut When Reason Breaks—about two very different girls who are both dealing with depression—we were excited to invite both reviewer and author to the website this week to discuss the book further.
We’re happy to have a chance to chat with Marieke Nijkamp—WNDB VP of finance, autistic author, and previous Disability in Kidlit contributor—about her work and autism in literature.
Kayla Whaley talks with thirteen-year-old activist and author Melissa Shang about her recent middle grade debut.
Author Tara Kelly sits down with her newest teen fan to discuss Harmonic Feedback, a young adult novel about a music-loving girl with autism, ADD, and anxiety disorder.
Magic and technology often minimize disability in SF/F. How can authors meaningfully engage with disability and the ways that speculative elements can affect disabled characters?
A snarky New York Times column referred to CFS as “yuppie flu,” and oh, it was hilarious. Those silly rich people imagining themselves sick!
Speculative fiction is work that focuses on difference, work that immerses us in it. But the choices we make when building a fictional world can reflect on the world that we live in now. So how do we worldbuild with disability in mind?
Perhaps “normal” behavior is best described as a “normative spectrum.”
Predictably, many of the tropes relating to D/deaf and hard of hearing characters deal with communication methods and degree of hearing loss. Most, if not all, of these tropes have to do with people’s assumptions and wishful thinking about hearing loss.
An exceptionalist narrative might, at first glance, seem like a positive or even empowering one. But, as it always goes when it comes to depictions of disability, the situation is much more complicated than that-