United Kingdom
I'm a disabled writer, journalist, and editor based in the UK. My non-fiction is focused on health, disability, and politics, and its intersections in art and entertainment. I've had by-lines in The Establishment, The Ecologist, and The Guardian — among others — and anthology essays published by places like Monstrous Regiment Publishing, and in Hachette's "Letters from Lockdown" collection.
As of March 2023 I write a regular column for The Unwritten. Unruly Bodies; Remarkable Lives focuses on forgotten disabled figures from history and publishes monthly.
My fiction often runs towards the speculative, horror, and so-called "weird fic", and can be found in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Disturbing the Body by Boudicca Press, Strix Magazine, and many more.
A "collective response" to the disproportionate impact of the rising cost of living on disabled people, a Shape Arts project has brought an artistic billboard campaign to Sheffield and four other cities.
t the Conservative party conference this week, the most vulnerable members of society found themselves firmly in the prime minister's line of fire. Liz Truss still hasn't ruled out plans to bring in a real-term benefits cut during the UK's worst cost of living crisis in a generation.
When I started to accept that I was disabled, one of the first things I did was turn to the internet for examples of successful disabled people. Perhaps this is a common experience - suddenly becoming part of a minority group, and needing to reassure yourself that people like you have thrived in the past.
When the first lockdown was announced, it was a surprise to discover I'd been left off the government's shielding list. As the keeper of an unholy alliance of chronic illnesses, including myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and episodic ataxia, I'd at least expected to be warned to be careful.
TW: This piece discusses the sudden death of a disabled person, Kara Jane. Please take care when reading Two days into 2023, the friends of bedbound musician Kara Jane, 32, shared the heartbreaking news that she had sadly passed away. "In the end, her body was too frail to survive," they wrote on her website [...]
Five writers - Nasim Marie Jafry, Laura Elliott, Henry Anderson, JP Seabright and Louise Kenward - discuss what it's like to write with M.E. and how chronic illness has forced them to discover new modes of understanding, new forms of expression, new realms of imagination (as edited by author Katy Wimhurst).
This month, the Society of Authors launched a new award. The Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses (ADCI) Prize offers a disabled or chronically ill author a top prize of £1000 for a novel - which must also include a disabled or chronically ill character - with two runners-up receiving £500 each.
'The creature knew him. Behind the aquarium glass, it watched him shift on the hospital bed, a tentacular catheter coiling from the tip of his cock, and it waited. The laboratory-turned-sick bay, humid, heat-hazed, and hated, cradled them like a womb. And the creature that Dani loved more than she loved him, watched him through the barren hours of the night and knew what it had done.'
There is a woman in my house whose name I do not know. It isn’t a big house, my house, but sometimes I think there are rooms in here that even I don’t know about. If I think about them for too long it makes me nervous; and it isn’t good for me to be nervous. After all, maybe there are other women in these other rooms and maybe some of them have been here for even longer than I have. And wouldn’t that be a horror?
"Convalescence needs time, and the value we place on that ultimately comes down to what our politicians will support," writes Dr Gavin Francis in his new book, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence. I'm reading his book in the yellow armchair in my office, one of two armchairs that have become the centre of my [...]
Inclusion is invisible when it is something you have always had. If you are someone who can walk, then you may never need to think about ramps. If you have never experienced chronic pain or fatigue, then you might not notice that public seating has quietly disappeared in recent years.
When you hear the word “lockdown” it’s easy to think of something bad, like the world is getting smaller and things are being taken away. It sounds like a key being turned in a lock and shutting everyone inside. But sometimes, when you turn a key, it opens a door instead of closing it, and that’s what it was like for me.
I never wanted to be the madwoman in the attic. That’s why I work downstairs.
Quite frankly, we disabled people are everywhere right now, but not in the way many of us would like. If we're not wielding chainsaws and going on murderous rampages, then we're plotting world domination from our wheelchairs and reveling in a variety of gruesome deaths.
Laura is a twenty-something disabled writer and journalist. Her short-fiction has been published by Strix Magazine and Rhythm and Bones, and she hosts the monthly politics and disability podcast, Visibility Today. You can find her screaming into the void on Twitter at @TinyWriterLaura.
What if you could get a medical diagnosis for free? No confusing copays, no being put on hold trying to argue an unexpected bill with your insurance company. A first, and second, and third opinion, all at once. Do we have the government to thank? Nope, just TV.
The need for an accessible world has never been more evident.