28 Apr CFP: Disabled People’s Creative Writing
Edited by Associate Professor Jessica White and Dr Amanda Tink
Deaf authors Judith Wright and Henry Lawson wrote that they became writers partly as a result of being deaf. Similarly, Les Murray said that autism was the main catalyst for his poetic creativity, and Alan Marshall said that being disabled led him to develop the observational abilities that he believed were essential to his writing. Such experiences are shared not only by other Australian disabled authors, but disabled authors from around the world.
This special issue of TEXT aims to highlight the myriad ways in which disability engenders creative writing. We invite papers that explore the influence of impairment and disablement on writing techniques or topics. We are particularly, but by no means exclusively, interested in how these are entangled with other personal characteristics such as race, gender, age, and class.
Potential topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Analysis of a particular disabled author
- How impairment shapes creative writing
- How disabled authors influence each other’s writing
- Learning and unlearning writing conventions
- Translating individual experience for a diverse audience
- Stories told and stories concealed
- Crip style, genre, etc
- Disability politics and poetics
Abstracts for scholarly papers, or expressions of interest for creative works, should be 250 words in length and sent to the editors at [email protected] and
[email protected]
Please include a brief biography with your abstract or expression of interest (100 words max) and ensure that you include your email address for reply. Please also familiarise yourself with TEXT’s submission guidelines at https://textjournal.scholasticahq.com/for-authors.
Abstracts are due by 1 June 2026.