Interview with Courtney Summers about This Is Not a Test
We invite Courtney Summers to the blog to discuss researching and writing mental illness, disability in her zombie novel, and the lack of diversity in apocalyptic narratives.
Blog overview
Post listing
Review: The Shattering by Karen Healey
Keri’s anxiety seems more of a framing device than anything else; The Shattering doesn’t contain as thorough a portrayal of anxiety as I’d hoped for, though its representations of other kinds of diversity more than make up for that.
Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Despite reservations about the ending, I would recommend The Rest of Us Just Live Here; it’s a welcome addition to YA novels involving OCD and anxiety.
Interview with Heidi Heilig about The Girl from Everywhere
Heidi Heilig and S. Jae-Jones sit down to talk about the book’s portrayal of bipolar disorder, writing mental illness, and writing with a mental illness.
Overcompensating: Magical Erasure of Blindness in SFF
These magical or futuristic “fixes” seem rooted in a discomfort with disability: many writers cannot (or don’t want to) imagine a life without sight and therefore create excuses to give their character equivalent sighted experiences.
Review: Young Knights of the Round Table by Julia Golding
Linette is more a convenient plot device than a protagonist, and disabled readers deserve more. Young Knights of the Round Table is a prime example of incidental disability done wrong.
Discussion: Fictional Disabilities
In science-fiction and fantasy, you invariably run into fictional disabilities and allegories. Do these “count” as disability? What makes them work successfully in a book?
Review: Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
Hanna is a character with bipolar disorder; she’s not “bipolar disorder, the walking human diagnosis.” I think people who share the disease will find something soothing in seeing someone who both manages and mismanages her illness realistically.
Review: The Prisoner of Cell 25 by Richard Paul Evans
An accurate, respectful, and deftly handled portrayal of Tourette’s Syndrome, from an author who has the condition himself.
Disability Metaphors in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
While I don’t think disability metaphors are sufficient disability representation, I do think that they’ll come up naturally in many stories, and that they’re relevant to the discussion of disability in SFF.