After I was awarded my Town Hall Seattle residency, I was asked to curate two events to showcase my work and discuss aspects of my work and the communities I’m in that motivate me. For me, the first thing I wanted to do was an event about disability in fiction and invite two writers who inspire me: John Wiswell and Ross Showalter. On April 26, we met on the virtual Town Hall Seattle stage to share our fiction and discuss writing disability in fiction.
Below is our video, a transcript of our discussion, and a bibliography of works mentioned in the discussion.
John Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He is a winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “Open House on Haunted Hill,” as well as a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. His work has appeared at Uncanny Magazine, the LeVar Burton Reads Podcast, Tor.com, Lightspeed Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, among other fine venues.
Ross Showalter is a Deaf queer writer based in the Pacific Northwest. His short stories, personal essays, and critical pieces have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Strange Horizons, Catapult, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. His work has been a finalist for the Best of the Net anthology, included on Entropy Magazine’s Best of the Year lists, and supported by the Anderson Center and Deaf Spotlight. He earned his BFA in creative writing from Portland State University and he currently teaches creative writing courses in UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
Sarah Salcedo is an award-winning filmmaker, illustrator, and author. Her writing has been published in Uncharted Magazine, Hobart, Luna Station Quarterly, Hobart After Dark, Not Deer Magazine, Pacifica Literary Review, The Future Fire, Hypertext Magazine, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been featured at The Daily Drunk and their Marvelous Verses anthology. Her feature documentary, Promised Land, debuted in film festivals in 2016. She attended the 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop, will be attending the 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop, and is the Spring 2022 Writer-in-Residence for Town Hall Seattle.
Below is an edited version of the discussion captured from the CART services available that evening. Some errors may still be present. A hyperlinked bibliography of the authors, stories, and books brought up in the discussion follows this transcript.
FAITH: Good evening. My name is Faith and I'm the house manager here at Town Hall. On behalf of the staff at Town Hall Seattle it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight ice program with our spring Writer In Residence, Sarah Salcedo, John Wiswell and Ross Showalter.
As we get under way I would like to acknowledge our institution's stands on the unceded traditional territory of the Coast Salish People, particularly the Duwamish. We thank them for the continuing use of the natural resource of their ancestral homeland. Town Hall is adding new events and podcasts every day. This Saturday the African American Writers Alliance shares readings from their lathes anthology, "Black writers unmasked". Don't miss Sarah Salcedo's final night coming up on May 23rd. Visit our website to learn more and join our email list to get the latest updates. Town Hall's work is made possible through your support and the support of our sponsors. As part of our Arts & Culture series, this event is supported by 4Culture, ArtsFund, city of Seattle Arts & Culture, and Washington State Arts Commission. Town Hall's also a member-supported organization, so I'd like to thank all of the members who are joining us. If you share Town Hall's vision of community strengthened by discussions, civics, and culture where everyone has a voice, please consider supporting us by donating or becoming a member.
Sarah Salcedo is an award-winds filmmaker illustrator, and author. Her writing has been published in "Luna Station Quarterly," "Hobart After Dark," "Not Deer Magazine," "Pacifica Literary Review," "The Future Fire," "Hypertext Magazine," "Words & Sports Quarterly," and elsewhere. She is the Spring 2022 Writer-in-Residence for Town Hall Seattle and attended the 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop. John Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He is a winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “Open House on Haunted Hill,” as well as a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. His work has appeared at "Uncanny Magazine," the "LeVar Burton Reads Podcast," Tor.com, "Lightspeed Magazine," and "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction," among other fine venues. Ross Showalter is a Deaf queer writer based in the Pacific Northwest. His short stories, personal essays, and critical pieces have been published in "The New York Times," "Electric Literature," "Strange Horizons," "Catapult," "Black Warrior Review," and elsewhere. His work has been a finalist for the "Best of the Net" anthology, included on "Entropy Magazine"’s Best of the Year lists, and supported by the Anderson Center and Deaf Spotlight. He earned his BFA in creative writing from Portland State University, and he currently teaches creative writing courses in UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.please give me a warm welcome to our panelists, Sarah Salcedo, John Wiswell, and Ross Showalter.
SARAH: I just want to thank John and Ross for joining me tonight. I also want to thank Town Hall Seattle for naming me the spring 2022 Writer In Residence and telling me that I could create events that align with my different identities.
The first event I knew I wanted to plan is with John and Ross. They're two writers that have inspired me. The first story I ever read of John's was the house -- “Open House on Haunted Hill”, from Diabolical Plots, and Ross I actually met in Words West Press class on David Lynch and speculative stories and he wrote a story that was probably one of the most powerful stories on disability and ableism that I've ever read, and every time I think about it, I get teary.
So the chance to get together with these two people and talk about writing about disability and . . . it is just an honor. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to John, who's going to introduce his first story of the evening.
(Stories are read)
SARAH: All right. So. Let's jump into discussion.
I wanted to start off, Ross and John have been so kind as to basically be chatting with me over the last few weeks as we prepared for this event. So I wanted to dive into telling the audience about yourself. What do you write? What are your stories that you're most excited are out there in the world?
John?
JOHN: I like to write about weird worlds in which familiar people fit. The more normal the world, the less societally normative the person. I'm very interested in playing with what we take for granted, what should be the base of norms.
Often that winds up being disability rep. But just as often it winds up being something supernatural that is typically a villain. I become kind of the, like, humanize every mono-monster guy in short fiction. I just, I get a big kick out of it, I blame it on a childhood of growing up liking the villain better than the hero arose in everything.
But also as you grow up, it's very easy to come to realize the narratives that groups tell about each other. The narratives that white people tell about Indigenous peoples. The narratives that neurotypical people tell about the mentally ill, that we're supposed to fear people who look or act different. You can't just come to understand autistic people and just engage with them on their own terms. It has rendered me deeply sympathetic to sometimes making the rest of the world the other. And the disabled are the monstrous. The familiar and the sympathetic.
And so I'm very proud of the story that won a Nebula Award, this is open house on haunted hill, which is just about a haunted house that just wants somebody to live in it. It'll be good, it promises, it won't haunt you. “Just please come live in me. I'm very lonely.”
And so, like, I . . . it's not my most popular story, but I'm very proud of the tyrant lizard and her plus one, which is about a d/Deaf security guard being harassed by a Tyrannosaurus who turns out also to be deaf. And I will go out and say, I think I'm on my third disabled dinosaur story now. I can't get it enough of them. But there were millions of dinosaurs who were disabled before they met meteor ends.
And I . . . I'm very proud of story that will be coming out later at Tor.com, it'll be the last one I talk about here, if we wanna more about our own work, that's fine, but story called DIY, which is about a disabled child who always wanted to go to wizarding school and when they finally admit him, he has too much medical debt to be able to attend. And so he winds up trying to learn magic from the internet. Where what can I do on my own?
The people he runs into out in the world who are like him, who have different disabilities, 'cause I am a huge -- surely we'll back to this stuff, but I'm a huge sucker with people with different disabilities bonding and going on journeys together. Bonds are one of the my favorite things. I don't see the point to not including -- not just my own experiences, but the experiences of my friends. In our imaginative stories. So that's what I love to write.
What about you, Ross?
ROSS: My answers are so boring by comparison, what you say. I've always been working and publishing short fiction for about two years. At this point I think I would say, you know, I tend to a lot of short fiction that tends to focus on deaf and disabled people living in a normative deeply ableist society that often doesn't give a shit about us.
And most of those stories tend to be influenced by science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I do often -- I think because I've grown up often times figuring I was in a bit of a liminal space between the deaf and hearing world and never quite feel like I fit in, I like to sort of occupy that between speculative fiction and literary fiction.
And yeah, the work I'm probably the most proud of is what I published in 2020, called “Night Moves”. And it's a story about ASL student who starts signing in his sleep after he gets out of a toxic relationship with a d/Deaf person. And it was a lot of fun to write that one. It was a lot of fun.
SARAH: I love “Night Moves”. That was the story that you were gonna read tonight and I'm so glad we got to hear the excerpt, but night moves is terrific. I hope you all go to both John and Ross' website and read through everything that you can find, because they're both so fantastic.
For me, all of my characters are autistic. Or ADHD. I can't not write with that lens. And it's very interesting. The first novel I wrote before our documentary, I've been a documentary film work for a very long time and I only just started doing short fiction within, like, the last year and a half. But before the documentary, I was managers around with a novel that just wouldn't work because it was definitely an autistic female character, but I only had my ADHD diagnosis, so I had no idea why her biggest issue was socializing with people, and all of these, you know, interpersonal issues that she was struggling with, this childhood trauma, it was not working because I didn't have my full diagnosis and the full acceptance of that.
And one of my favorite stories of mine I'm most proud of is actually coming out in May from Uncharted Magazine. It is kind of like the story I just wrote, written from an abled character's point of view, which I guess is my own use of fiction, exploring empathy. I put myself into someone's shoes who doesn't necessarily understand my point of view. It's told from a mother who wants to genetically edit her daughter's neurodivergence out of her. And the story alternates between the mother's point of view and her daughter who, spoiler-alert, ends up leading a rebellion with a bunch of other disabled characters of all different walks, and they come back home to enact judgment on the society that banished them.
I'm really excited for it. I expect it to be highly offensive (laughs) but really fun.
But talking about that, this story is actually the first story I dealt with chronic illness. And that was really tough for me. That was -- talking about my autistic and ADHD side of me is natural as talking about how I breathe, but talking about chronic illness, because I never know when I'm having a good day and then tomorrow might be a bad day. And I might not be able to sit up without the entire world feeling like it's shattering.
Writing that feels almost like naming something that's going to come and get me. And I think that's why we all love speculative literature, because you can talk about disability in a slant way. And so I'm really glad that I tried this story. But it was definitely interesting having to encounter that side of my disability in fiction.
And I'd love you both to talk about how do you approach both the joys and the difficulties of writing about your disability in your stories? Whoever wants to go first. Just jump in.
JOHN: I went first before. Would you like to go, Ross?
ROSS: Um . . .
(Laughter.)
ROSS: I think . . . Well, it's weird because to me -- writing about disability is as natural as breathing, you know. I went through a creative writing program at Portland State University, and that the program I was writing stories that were technically good but I didn't care about them. At all. They were stories that anyone could have written, you know.
And so I think that for me, I had a bit of a mental breakdown and I asked myself what the fuck do I wanna write about? I'm gonna get this degree in creative writing, then I need to write something that's gonna give me a career. I wanna write something that gives me the urge to keep going.
And so I think for me -- and that's really when I started writing stories that really dealt with the -- kind of the cultural complication sometimes with being d/Deaf, because . . . the Deaf community can sometimes be very insular and sometimes be very . . . quick judge sometimes, and sometimes it's been [indiscernible] a way of communicating and moving throughout the world can sometimes be at odds with mainstream society.
And I think that for me, I really wanted to talk about that. But I worry that I was to talk about it nobody would understand what it was I was talking about.
But, you know, I was the only deaf person in the creative writing program so I had hearing people around me, so they were saying I don't understand that. But when I started taking -- when I started meeting other d/Deaf writers on Twitter and on the internet, and I started sending my stories to them, they said: “This is phenomenal. You should keep going.”
And so I think for me, I'm really interested in how we tend to communicate with each other and how we tend to communicate across community boundaries and how we tend to communicate and how we tend to treat each other and how we enact and wield power over each other.
And I think if I can talk about -- if I can make people see, if I can make hearing/abled people see the role they might play in making deaf and disabled people feel less than, then I feel I've done my job well.
I hope that answers your question (laughing).
SARAH: It was wonderful.
JOHN: Yeah. All of that is brilliant. I can only yes and. There is no disagreement there. Everything there is brilliant.
I think one additional point I'd make is there is the fear that nobody will get it, and sometimes immediately afraid that somebody with similar lived experience to me will have a different read on it and say: You're lying or you're making this up or you're getting it wrong.
And if you open yourselves -- if you open your heart out onto the page, and you write your experience, and somebody else who has that condition comes out and said: That's -- this is -- this is a crock, it can devastate you.
So I've slowly built up this sort of A, an external, extra text, shall boundary of here's what I'll talk about or here are other writers¨ who are also producing work on this theme, this disability, this representation. Understand there should be lots of stories about each of these things.
There shouldn't be one and shouldn't be competing for a monolith. Really why that happens is society gives us so few opportunities that everybody wants to be the one. Because they know their truth is real. And we're all desperate to share. And to be expressed and to be seen.
And I -- to some extent, that has meant reading as many disabled writers as I can because it's a community I want to write in. It's honestly fairly devastating to write something that hurts a fellow disabled writer. I'm very -- I'm often -- that's often my greatest concern, is that the thing that was meant to give some other kind of meaning winds up being painful.
Sometimes a story is intended to elicit pain. Sarah, your story you shared obviously is sharing a kind of pain, and that's good. You didn't do anything wrong by hurting me with that. It was consensual harm. (Laughter.) But . . . I also try to then measure as I'm writing, okay, if this is gonna be something that's really vulnerable, what do I average do with it? What's the aim? Don't go any further on the page in this story. Always remember you get to write more. You can write -- there could be 12 more stories after this that cover more of that territory. And that way, not too much of an experience is in one story. I can cover specific ground.
And that usually helps me hone what I'm sharing with the audience.
Also, I usually have a target audience in mind. Some of my stories are for people who went through a thing. I wrote a story that was published last year, it was we are not Phoenixes, which is fantasy for people in palliative care. And I wrote it for some people who I'll never see again, who I love very much. And if nobody else liked it, didn't care. Like, it really was for a few dear friends of mine.
And then it turned out that it had a resonant meaning outside, and that was wonderful. But sometimes you have to set who's this for? What is it trying to express to them? And then are there layers outside of it that will be accessible to wider and wider audiences. But crafting to audiences for people is clutch. Like Ross was talking about, sometimes you wanna tell able people a thing or expand their compassion. And that is a worthy goal and sometimes I aim for that, but sometimes it's -- we gotta write for us to get each other's backs. They're not -- those are not antagonistic ends. Those are both beautiful things you can do with your fiction.
SARAH: I think Ross even mentioned something in our emails we were sharing with each other. He said fiction is a channel for empathy, which I really loved that phrasing. And then also working through our issues for the community and I think we're all hoping that our communities here and they're definitely the people we prioritize the most, but then we are hoping that abled people hear and they see different things.
I wrote a story about an autistic woman falling in love with a nonbinary person on the bus. And that wasn't for anybody. That was just because I wanted to see a love story about an automobile accident person and a nonbinary person. And not have their autistic or nonbinary identities come up in conversation at all. It was just . . . she's weird and prickly, and they're, you know who they are, and . . . all it is is a love story. And I don't explain it to anybody, because I just wanted it to be out in the world.
But like this story I wrote tonight deeply about my identity, deeply about stuff that we can all identify, we're all going through the pandemic, and some of us who are chronically ill and immunocompromised are going through this different layer as we watch people react to trauma that we've been existing in for a while. It's this weird kind of wave upon wave.
I had to start this story and stop it, like, three different times. And I wanted to kinda move in as we -- we have our different audiences, but how do we manage our
self-care when we're writing for different audiences, when we put expectations on a story, how do we know when to step away, how do you guys measure those type of expectations and boundaries for yourself?
Ross?
ROSS: I wrote a story in 2021 that is probably the most personal thing I'll ever write. It's a short story called “Tinnitus”. And I wrote it . . . when I was going through the aftermath of a really hard separation. And I sent it to a magazine, thinking they're not gonna take this. And they took it. And they published it three weeks after the breakup happened.
And it was . . . very surreal to see people responding to my pain as I was still processing it. Because that entire story is about the fact that this protagonist keeps falling in love, the protagonist who is d/Deaf, keeps falling in love with hearing people who leaves them. And that's pain that obviously I share. And I think for me,
after that story was published, I had to ask myself, Oh, if I'm gonna write something that's personal again, what are the boundaries I need to have? What are the points of view I want to consider.
And I think honestly is just kind of . . . trying to create a story and trying to . . . treat it as just a story and not part of yourself, which can be difficult sometimes. And I mean, I think it's really just a matter of trying to set a boundary and trying to understand that yes, this came from me, this is my pain, this is my experience, this is my point of view. But it can also be something else as well. And my feeling about the story are not
paramount.
That's pretty much all I've got. It's still honestly a project I'm still working to figure out.
SARAH: How 'bout you, John?
JOHN: As we continue to grow and expand in what we can do in our work, it feels like we're always recalibrating what we're -- how we're supposed to emotionally process the creating of it and the reception of it by audiences.
I find especially as times get tough, as the pandemic just continues rolling, as one gets more upset at ableist establishments who can't wait to escape the terror of living like I have lived most of my life, that I tend to come to writing in one of two modes: It's either I really wanna confront something today or I really wanna escape from something today.
Those two different modes of construction are fiction, both of them totally valid, escapist fiction often gets guff but sometimes it's meaningful in what it decide to move away from, what are it decides to normalize instead, and other times I really want to -- like the story I read tonight was obviously about confronting what it is to have chronic pain. Not systemic oppression in the face of chronic pain. But just the attempt to deal with a particularly bad spell of it.
Sometimes it's confrontational, a story coming out in [indiscernible] magazine soon that is about engaging with somebody who toxly yields popularity. There was just a weekend when I had to get that off my chest. Whereas there are other times where you just were, like, yeah, but disabled people deserve joy. All my stories shouldn't be how horrible and miserable it is, how everybody ruins my life, 'cause my life isn't ruined. In part my life is wonderful thanks to the many people I get to share it with. And I wanna write stories that reflected that, as well. Depends what my emotional bandwidth and needs are at the time. And I pursue the fiction that I am best able to do in a given day.
It's usually also why I have, like, 17 Word documents open on my computer at once.
If you're ever wondering why is John Wiswell so prolific? Because he just doesn't close tabs is the answer.
SARAH: That's also “#neurodivergentlife”. I love it.
(laughter)
Speaking on the whole self-care and boundaries, Ross today you tweeted that people have been reaching out to you through your website as kind of like ask your local queer Deaf writer as a resource, and John was, like, did you see this thread? This is -- I've experienced this, too. And I just wonder if you guys would share about how being that prolific writer who's writing from a specific viewpoint also kinda puts a target on your back and how do you balance that yes actually I do want people to be aware, but also I'm one person, and have a life.
ROSS: Yeah, I should tweet less.
(laughter)
Whenever I get a message from -- I mean, first off, it's very flattering, to be asked for your point of view, of course. It's very flattering. I'm honored and I'm humbled that you want to ask this little weirdo who writes little weird fiction. And puts them out in the world.
But I think for me, the first question that always pops into my head is always why are you asking me? Why are you asking a fiction writer about science and [indiscernible] and translation when that's not really my forte.
I mean, I do have interests in those areas, but interest doesn't necessarily mean expertise. And it doesn't necessarily mean a complete comprehensive background. It just means I spend a lot of time until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning just kinda researching my weird little rabbit hole.
So yeah, I think for me, I tend to not really respond to those questions, because if I can't find an answer for why is this person asking a fiction writer for their point of view, then -- if I can't find an answer for that question, then I just tend to just ignore it and move on.
Because I mean . . . fiction writing is just pretty much all that I do. And I don't want to purport that I am any sort of an authority or I don't want to purport that I am any sort of a voice for the Deaf community, and I think . . . to . . . and I think . . . yeah, I think . . . yeah, I don't -- I don't really have anything more beyond that. I think it's just really, you know -- I think a lot of people assume that if you have a lot of publication out there, that means that you have a lot of power. And it really doesn't. It just means that you got lucky. Several times over.
(Laughter.)
ROSS: Yeah.
JOHN: I'm not -- 'cause I'm not all-knowing. I have the contact form there to help as I can, but I -- but any of us only know so much even about our health condition specific to our body versus specific to the human race. Because, like, boy are there a lot of medicines that have been prescribed to me that work for other people that just made me worse. Right?
But there are different kinds of emails that you can get, and as I've become more popular I've gotten more mail with we [indiscernible] about disability and they fall into different categories and I always try to respond in good faith when I can.
When a -- especially a newly disabled person, who has something like chronic pain or neurodivergent is, like, hey, how do you write ever? I can't write every day. I won't get published because I don't write every day what do I do? Yes, I'm gonna try to help that person and talk to that person and give 'em a little guidelines. Like owe, the only thing I'm writing today is this email, then I'm goin' to the bathtub or somethin'. I don't know.
But sometimes, frequently, you get emails that feel like somebody is asking you to do their homework for them, that, like, it's an abled person who finds your -- one of your disabilities curious or interesting, can you tell -- I've never talked to you before, but would you tell me, like, intimate details about your medical history? No. No, I don't think I will. It can feel objectifying if it's done in a certain faith.
And so I'm not -- that's not to discourage ever reaching out. There is something to the nature in which you attempt to have a conversation with anybody. Not just me, but to anybody. Because I would always try to treat somebody who I reach out to with respect. And if I don't have the spoons that day to have a proper conversation, then that email gets put off till tomorrow.
Yeah, like I don't -- I don't begrudge anyone curiosity, but . . . Google is more for the research curiosity part. After you've looked a thing up, then maybe have a conversation, rather than treat disabled people as the outlet to explain their lives to you.
What about you, Sarah?
SARAH: Ah, well, I . . . kind of like you, sometimes the only email or the only writing I can get done is an email. And sometimes not even that. Like I think I wrote to you guys the other day I was writing with my hands stuffed in pin cushions. And it's just sometimes . . . you're not always able to reach out but when you are, you do what you can. And it's just it's -- it's a weird kind of alchemy every day. Trying to figure out what energy levels I have to put into different things. And I have my hierarchy of needs, am I sustained, is my family sustained, is my work sustained, and then everything else.
I know we're over time. But I said that . . . I mean . . . the wonderful thing about this being virtual is I can't see people streaming up the aisles; right? Or -- so I'm not offended if you're dropping off right now.
But I did say that I wanted to read, like -- open up questions to John and Ross that you guys could ask outside of the topics that I came up with.
JOHN: This is putting y'all on the spot. You could just cuss at me and say it was a bad question if you don't -- if you don't like it. But who are disabled writers who excite you in the field today? And while you think, because that's definitely putting you on the spot I'll say that I adore the short fiction of A.T. Greenblatt if you wanted to start. She wrote a story called “And Yet”. That is particularly one of my favorite short stories in recent years. It's its own quantum take, among other things. And I think she's prolific and brilliant. Also recently had a great horror story about neurodivergent called the family in the “The Family in the Adit” in Nightmare Magazine. And also I think Nicola Griffith, who is most famous for Hilda, is a fantastic disabled writer. I'm going to mispronounce the name, but Elsa Sjunnenson, recently published a wonderful memoir and critique called being seen, about being a deafblind woman.
And those are three disabled creators in the field who I just -- I think the world of.
ROSS: So Sara Nović. She was pretty much -- when I did my program at Portland I found her work online. And I saw that she basically was doing what I did. She basically was doing what I wanted to do. And she just released this novel, called True Biz. And . . . yeah. She's just amazing. I adore her. You should definitely check her out if you have a chance, because yeah, she's just lovely. So Sarah Novic. Nicola Griffith, like you said. Also Molly McCully Brown. Wrote this poetry collection called I might fuck up this title. But it's called the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded and it's incredible in how it kind of combines history with ghosts. It's just stunning.
[indiscernible] of course.
Shit. I mean, I know I'm forgetting a bunch of people. I mean, [indiscernible] just so many -- the great thing about being a disabled writer today is that there's so much out there just weighting to be read. And so -- the fact that I mention only a sliver of the fiction and the poetry and the nonfiction that I have been fortunate enough to find.
Yeah.
SARAH: Well, you guys have named every single one of the writers that sprung to my mind. So it was horrible going last at this.
But . . . Anastacia Reneé is a poet that I really, really love.¨ their work is so tremendous. And they write from both a neurodivergent and disabled and Black and queer lens. And they've been a huge encouragement to me throughout the years. And then Seanan McGuire is repping amazing fiction that could -- it couldn't have come from any other mind other than a neurodivergent mind. There's a lot of neurodivergent joy in the world she explores. Her work is wonderful to read.
So . . . kind of along those lines, John, you mentioned The Stand had this duo that you absolutely love and was inspired by. What works have inspired you guys? Like ah, this is -- this is what I -- why I wanna write these identities in fiction. I wanna be bold like this.
JOHN: A couple come to mind. It felt like permission. That felt like validation that what I was trying to do could be desired because I honestly thought many of my attempts at representation in stories that weren't ‘defeatist’ or ‘miserable’ I thought that publishing wouldn't allow them to exist. You have to -- disabled pain was all that the world wanted.
Vina Jie-Min Prasad wrote something in Uncanny Magazine called “Fandom for Robots” that was about an AI that wanted to write fan fiction. That's the whole plot, here's this unusual entity that will now create low-conflict, lovely things. Similarly when Martha Wells took off writing Murderbot, which¨ hard not to read. It is neurodivergent coded, I was, like, oh, yeah, like you can do . . . neuroatypical characters that are designed for harm that just wanna watch Netflix and that can be the plot.
Okay, we're allowed. We're allowed to do attempts at joy, different mindsets and experiences in the world. Experience of the world that are critical of the structure of the world.
But that aren't necessarily drawn into the same spiral plots. Now, that then attacked me to do more explicit disabled characters, the thing that I'm writing right now is just disabled veterans coming back from one of those epic wars that are happening in all the doorstop books but they're trying to find care once they come home. And it's not about the epic war, it's about what gets elided from epilogues when you got disabled in the war and need help.
And that's direct response to seeing warm-hearted, supportive, oddball characters that you wouldn't think would fit into plots that I didn't think short fiction would publish.
Those two Vina Jie-Min Prasad and Martha Wells, are, like, fairy godmothers of fiction.
SARAH: How 'bout you, Ross?
ROSS: I'm gonna go into a bit left field and mention Carmen Maria Machado. She wrote this story called “Eight Bites” which was published in Gulf Coast. And it was -- the first time that I saw someone explicitly writing about the body, explicitly writing about body issues, explicitly writing about what it feels like to be in a body that society does not like.
And I just remember reading that story and being, like, holy shit. You can do that? You can do that. Oh my god.
And then so it was Carmen Maria Machado, Sara Nović I mentioned before. She published a story called “Conversion“ which is beautiful and amazing. I think -- I'm gonna mention two more. I’m going to mention Brandon Taylor. He wrote these -- he writes a lot about anxiety and about discomfort of being the only token person in a oftentimes a white, ableist institution, and kinda how [indiscernible] write about that and gave me the freedom to kind of write about their anxiety that I often feel being a Deaf person in a hearing environment.
And then the second one is Ilya Kaminsky. He wrote this poetry collection called Deaf Republic. Seeing him just invent that entire town and just really use it as a catapult to kind of talk about what you wanted to talk about and use disability and deafness in new, interesting ways, really made me feel like I could invent I didn't necessarily have to pull oh from my owner experiences, but I could also just invent whatever I wanted. As long as there was a question behind it that I wanted to pursue.
SARAH: Yeah, those are -- I hope someone's taking notes on all of the -- we need a bibliography. I don't know, I’ll have to go through the transcript and we'll compile bibliography later this week. Is there any questions you guys want to bring up before we end?
This was so wonderful. I really enjoyed this conversation. I love the stories you both read. Thank you so much for joining me. And thank you again, Town Hall. Thank you so much for ASL interpreters. And our CART services. We really appreciate all the people who have assisted us in making tonight's event happen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Authors and Works Brought Up in Discussion
Sara Nović and True Biz
Vina Jie-Min Prasad (维娜·杰敏·普拉萨德) “Fandom for Robots” in Uncanny Magazine
Carmen Maria Machado “Eight Bites” in Gulf Coast
A.T. Greenblatt and “The Family in the Adit” in Nightmare Magazine
Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded
Finally… please join our me for my second event, Speculative in Seattle, in person and virtual, on May 23 at 7:30 pm at Town Hall Seattle. The event features local science fiction and fantasy authors Nisi Shawl, Seanan McGuire, Shiv Ramdas, and Town Hall Writer-in-Residence Sarah Salcedo, and is sponsored by Clarion West, in addition to Town Hall Seattle's Writer-in-Residence program. Tickets are here. (Follow me on Twitter to get the event code to register for free later this week.
“Seattle is not only a UNESCO City of Literature, but we're one of the only UNESCO Cities of Lit in the world that's also a major hub of science fiction and fantasy. At this event, there will be a reading and afterwards, a talk about how the PNW is both a hub for speculative lit from amazing SFF authors past and present, programs like Clarion West, Norwescon, GeekGirlCon, PAX, Emerald City Comic Con, etc and how the region fuels our imaginations from the nature around us to the space tech being created in the region. We'll dive into what makes us so weird and wonderful and hope you'll join us.”