On Saturday, July 23, at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern, I’ll be co-hosting the first #CripLit Twitter Chat with Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project (@DisVisibility). I hope you can join us.

We’ll be talking about disabled writers creating disabled characters. In the future we’ll be looking at all kinds of genres and categories, but this time out we’ll be sticking with fiction written in English. Fiction is what I know best and, frankly, that’s what I see a dearth of: crip characters written by crips. We need to see ourselves represented; I get so very fucking tired of the (often rage-inducing) stereotypes written by non-crips. Anyone who has hurled J0jo Moyes’ Me Before You at the wall knows what I’m talking about.

I wanted this to be an international chat but although we’ve done our best with the scheduling it is far from perfect. (Particular apologies to the UK and South Africa. I’m not sure how many readers I have in India but, well, sorry there too.) If you’re a morning person in Australia and New Zealand it might work. We’ll Storify the chat so everyone will at least be able to follow the gist. If there’s enough interest from other parts of the world, perhaps we can occasionally schedule at different times. Let me or Alice know.

Meanwhile, here’s the official blurb.

#CripLit Twitter Chat
Disabled Writers & Disabled Characters
Co-hosts: Nicola Griffith @nicolaz
& Alice Wong @DisVisibility

Saturday, July 23, 2016 4pm Pacific/ 7 pm Eastern

The Disability Visibility Project is proud to partner with novelist Nicola Griffith in our first ever Twitter chat for disabled writers and writing disabled characters. Nicola Griffith is the creator of the #CripLit series and the DVP is the co-host/supporting partner.

All disabled writers are welcome to participate in the chat but please note we will be discussing fiction. Check the #CripLit hashtag on Twitter for announcements of future chats that will focus on different genres or posts from these two websites:
https://nicolagriffith.com
https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com

How to Participate

Follow @nicolaz @DisVisibility on Twitter

Use the hashtag #CripLit when you tweet

Check out this explanation of how to participate in a chat by Ruti Regan: https://storify.com/RutiRegan/examplechat

If you don’t use Twitter and want to follow along in real-time, check out the live-stream: http://twubs.com/CripLit

#CripLit Tweets for 7/23 chat

Welcome to our first-ever #CripLit chat! Created by @nicolaz, this chat is for disabled writers & will cover writing disabled characters

If you respond to a question such as Q1, your tweet should follow this format: “A1 [your message] #CripLit”

Q1 Please introduce yourself, your areas of interest as a writer, and any links to your work #CripLit

Q2 Do you identify as a disabled writer (or writer w/ a disability)? If so, why? Or do you prefer to be thought of as a writer, period? #CripLit

Q3 Among writers, what groups/communities do you have an affinity towards? Who supports you & your work? #CripLit

Q4 Do you connect with other disabled writers? If yes, why is that important? #CripLit

Q5 Are there disabled writers you love & want to highlight? Please describe and share your faves #CripLit

Q6 Who are some of your favourite disabled characters? Why? #CripLit

Q7 What is your process in developing a character, a disabled one in particular? Describe some disabled characters you created #CripLit

Q8 What tropes and stereotypes are you careful to avoid when constructing disabled stories & characters? #CripLit

Q9 What’s your advice to disabled & non-disabled writers who want to write believable & compelling stories about disabled ppl? #CripLit

Q10 What do you want most in terms of support? Better representation at conferences? (If so, which ones?) Something else? #CripLit

This concludes our first #CripLit chat! Please keep the conversation going!! Tweet co-hosts @nicolaz @DisVisibility questions/comments

Additional Links

Disability Art, Scholarship and Activism Nicola Griffith (5/18/16)

Writing Culture Has An Ableism Problem Denarii Monroe (6/14/16)

Writing program association continues to debate access for members with disabilities Josh Logue (3/28/16)

About

Nicola Griffith
is a native of Yorkshire, England, where she earned her beer money teaching women’s self-defence, fronting a band, and arm-wrestling in bars, before discovering writing and moving to the US. Her immigration case was a fight and ended up making new law: the State Department declared it to be “in the National Interest” for her to live and work in this country. This didn’t thrill the more conservative power-brokers, and she ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, where her case was used as an example of the country’s declining moral standards.

In 1993 a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis slowed her down a bit, and she concentrated on writing. Her novels are Ammonite (1993), Slow River (1995), The Blue Place (1998), Stay (2002), Always (2007) and Hild (2013). She is the co-editor of the BENDING THE LANDSCAPE series of original short fiction. Her multi-media memoir,  And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life, is a limited collector’s edition. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in an assortment of academic texts and a variety of journals, including Nature, New Scientist, Los Angeles Review of Books and Out. She’s won the Washington State Book Award, the Tiptree, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, the Premio Italia, the Lambda Literary Award (six times), and others.

Alice Wong
is a San Francisco-based disability advocate, freelance journalist, television watcher, news junkie, cat lover, and coffee drinker. Currently, she is the Founder and Project Coordinator for the Disability Visibility Project (DVP), a community partnership with StoryCorps and an online community dedicated to recording, amplifying, and sharing disability stories and culture. Currently she is a co-partner with Andrew Pulrang and Gregg Beratan for #CripTheVote, a non-partisan online campaign encouraging the political participation of people with disabilities. She is also a Staff Research Associate at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF.