Disability in Kidlit is on indefinite hiatus, and as such is closed to submissions.
Would you like to contribute a post or review? Fantastic! We are often looking for new content, so we’d be thrilled to have you, whether as a one-time or returning contributor. Please read the below guidelines before contacting us.
All our contributors must be disabled. As much as we appreciate people with an interest in disability due to having a disabled spouse, child, sibling, student, etc., we ask that you respect this guideline. “Nothing about us without us,” as the disability rights saying goes.
We understand that self-identification can be tricky. Sometimes people don’t consider their condition a disability, while others prefer to use different terms. For our purposes, we have a pretty flexible definition, which includes physical disabilities, chronic conditions, and mental illnesses. We’ve featured content about disabilities ranging from muscular dystrophy to ADHD, from Crohn’s disease to amputation, and from bipolar disorder to deafness. Talk to us if you have questions.
We also understand that sometimes disabilities may prevent you from writing your own posts. We have no problem with a relative or friend helping you with your post, or perhaps interviewing you if that works best. We’d just like to ask these helpful souls to refrain from editorial commentary.
We would like people to only review/write about a condition they personally have, or have had in the past. It’s difficult drawing lines here sometimes. Similar disabilities can manifest differently — see for example the wide range of people on the autism spectrum — or different disabilities can manifest similarly — for example, different conditions that both lead to people using mobility devices such as a cane or wheelchair. Mental illnesses can diverge and overlap in similar ways.
We wish to avoid policing people’s identities/disabilities, and ask potential contributors to use their common sense. If it’s a disability you feel qualified to write about based on your own experiences, it’s probably fine. Check with us if you want to make sure.
We’d like to extend an explicit invitation to:
- disabled teenagers
- people with rare disabilities
- people with disabilities we haven’t featured yet
- disabled people who also belong to other marginalized groups, in particular people of color
If you’re on the fence, please do reach out to us. Several of our contributors had never written an article or review before emailing us; we’d rather hear from you than not.
When you contact us, please make sure to mention your disability. We genuinely hate to harp on this, or to police anyone’s identity, but we regularly receive submissions from non-disabled people. We’d like to skip that awkward step of, “So … are you disabled?” Thank you for understanding!
Thanks so much for your interest. We hope to feature you in our next post!