Muse & the Marketplace 2018

From Very Special Episode Syndrome to magical disability, inspiration porn (inspoporn for short), and inevitable cures and disappearances, ableist disability tropes abound in poetry, fiction, and screenplay alike. In this session, we will discuss common ableist tropes and metaphors across multiple types of disabilities (mental and physical, hidden and apparent, born and acquired), as well as alternatives to those ableist tropes and turns of phrase. We sick, mad, disabled, and neurodivergent people can be bitter, resentful, happy, sexual, radical, passionate, angry as hell, and complicated human beings in real life. Yet we rarely find authentic representations of our own messy, multi-faceted selves (especially of disabled people at multiple margins) in literature. Join a disabled fiction writer and community organizer in learning how—and why—to undo ableism in the writing world, while supporting disabled writers in telling our own stories.