Bringing together essays from neurodivergent and disabled writers, and writers with chronic illnesses, this collection explores the impact of these experiences and the struggle against such biases within the field of creative writing. Whilst neuro-divergent and disabled writers publish world-class poetry, prose, and drama that moves readers and wins awards, they face many difficulties accessing these achievements — difficulties which often go unnoticed, unmentioned, and underappreciated. Visibility, insight, alternative approaches, and thorough research are all needed to create more inclusive writing environments. This book confronts these issues head on, calling for diversity in the creative writing field, community, and industry, and more equitable spaces in adjacent arenas from academia to publishing.
Broken into four sections, this anthology focuses on creative writing programs, classrooms, the community, and its people, combining narrative, research and practical contributions to the field to offer a mix of practical strategies, personal and pedagogical interventions, critiques, and craft meditations that explore teaching, transformation, evolution, embodied craft, visibility, belonging, injustice, otherness, and views from the outside. With essays and excerpts written by authors and educators from across seven countries, who are each impacted by a wide range of disabilities, including ADHD, autism, blindness, dyslexia, dyspraxia, stroke aphasia, cerebral palsy, bipolar, fibromyalgia, and rheumatoid arthritis, this collection informs, deconstructs and re-imagines to reform and revolutionize normative structures within writing institutions and communities.
Introduction Part One: The Programs – Interventions and Revolutions 1. Perfection of the (Care) Work: MFA vs. Disability-Centric Workshop Experience, Shane Neilson, poet, physician, and critic, University of Ottawa, Canada 2. Harm by Omission: (Auto)Ableism, Neurodivergence, and Trauma in Creative Writing PhD Programs, Christie Collins, Mississippi State, USA 3. Bipolar Disorder and Creativity: The Importance of Accommodation Plans, Celeste Maria Schueler, poet and education, USA 4. The Impact of Racism, Ableism, and Islamophobia on an Undiagnosed Autistic & ADHD Black Immigrant in a Graduate Writing Program, Said Shaiye, Twin Cities, USA 5. The Mad Writer: On Myth & Reality, Audrey Heffers, Illinois State University, USA 6. Achievement our Authenticity: Challenges Facing Neurodivergent Creative Writers in a Neurotypical Education System, Beth Rees, independent author, UK Section Two: The Classrooms – Pedagogy, Transformations, and Evolutions 7. The Power of Words: Vulnerability and Neurodiversity in the Creative Writing Classroom, by Rachel Carney, Cardiff University, UK 8. The Impact of Standard Grading Systems and Late Penalties on the Creative Process, by Jennifer Schneider 9. Poem Brut: What the Workshop can Learn from the Outside World, by Julia Rose Lewis 10. Balancing Self-Expression and Tradition in the Pedagogy of ASL Literature, Gina Yang, independent scholar, South Korea 11. Aphasia as Form of (Dis)content, Aidan Coleman, Southern Cross University, Australia 12. Serving the Neurodiverse Writer: The Ultimate FAQ for Teaching All Brains Better, Leigh Camacho Rourks, Beacon College, USA Section Three: The Community – Embodied Craft, Visability, and Belonging 13. There is a Charge for the Eyeing of My Scars: Writing the Neurodivergent, Disabled Body for a Dominant Audience, by Grace Quantock, author and psychotherapeutic counsellor, UK 14. Why Write? Reframing Personal Creative Writing Practice in the Light of Changing Diagnoses, by Oz Hardwick, Leeds Trinity University, UK 15. Spinning Words: An Experience of Poetry Creation by Autistic People, by Gustavo Henrique Rückert, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil 16. A Wholly Different Course: How Arbitrary Timelines Exclude Chronically Ill and Neurodivergent Writers, by Miranda Lynn Barnes, Loughborough University, UK 17. NaWays Publishing Entities can be Kinder to Neurodivergent Writers, Nathan Spoon, independent poet, USA Section Four: The People – Injustice, Otherness, and Views from the Outside 18. Excerpt from Planet of the Blind, by Stephen Kuusisto, Syracuse University, USA 19. The Gallery Effect: How Disabled Bodies are Consumed by Outsiders, What that Means, and How it Makes it even More Difficult to Untable Our Stories, by Tyler Darnell, independent writer, USA 20. You Spelled Your Name Wrong: A Dyslexic’s Journey Through the Writing World, by Saul Lemerond, University of Louisiana, USA 21. Excerpt from Story of a Poem, by Matthew Zapruder, Saint Mary’s College, USA 22. Who Wrote This?: Revisiting My Disability, Myself, and My Work, by Leigh Camacho Rourks Bibliography Index
Christie Collins is Lecturer of English at Mississippi State University, USA. A neuro-divergent and chronically ill writer, she has been published in Stirring, Phantom Drift, and Kenyon Review Online among other periodicals. Her chapbook, Along the Diminishing Stretch of Memory, was published in 2014 and her collection of poems, The Art of Coming Undone, was published in 2023. Saul Lemerond is Assistant Professor of English at Hanover College, USA. He is a dyslexic writer who lives in Madison, Indiana where he teaches American Literature and Creative Writing. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Bourbon Penn, Gigantic Sequins, Moon City Review, The Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and elsewhere. He is author of Digital Voices (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Reviews for Divergent Writers: Disability, Illness, Neurodivergence, and Ableism in Creative Writing
Divergent Writers is a welcome acknowledgement that 1 in 4 of us will become disabled for at least 3 months before we retire and that about twenty percent of us are neurodivergent. This book tells the important truth: we’re not all the same as each other, we’re each not the same as we were a few years ago, and that variety and variability is exactly what makes creative writing and the literature we produce exciting, relevant, and worthwhile for humanity. This anthology is an rousing breakthrough for a field that—thankfully—keeps evolving. * • Anna Leahy, Director of Tabula Poetica and Editor of Tab Journal, Chapman University, USA *
