hi, everyone. welcome to powells books at cedar hills. tonight we're excited to host elsa sjunneson debuting her new book being seen. also a hugo, aurora and british fantasy award winning writer as well as a historian, media critic and editor. her work has appeared in magazines such as uncanny and fireside and publications such as cnn talks and the boston globe, elsa, an activist for disability rights and she's worked with the new jersey 11th for change and the new york disability pride parade being seen. one deaf blind woman's fight to end is elsa's debut book that's part memoir, part cultural criticism, and part history of the deaf blind experience. tonight, elsa, who is and is joining conversation by local writer and puzzler curtis eaton. without further ado, please welcome elsa sjunneson and chen. thank you so much. hello, everyone. thanks for being here. welcome to the portland shelter. thank you.

and thank you to everybody who was patient four with me. there was a freight in front of my passenger train and. this is why we need to invest in passenger rail. hey, man. yeah. so we're here to talk about the book being. and this is the came out last year and this is a paperback that's right this fall is a difference between the two editions any edition revisions or anything? absolutely not. there no difference between the two except that on the back, the book by bio has a slight misprint. so get this edition of the paperback because in 50 years it'll be worth something. i mean, the hardcover might also be so really you should get both if you keep fingers. yeah so the book is fantastic. it covers a lot of your life, but um, you know, obviously i guess that, you know, being an activist is not your entire life, you know? and certainly, you know, i follow you on instagram. i know there are, you know,

other people and dogs in your life. um, and, um, and i wanted to start with something that i think i saw online on social media a while where people were talking about parenting and how one common mistake conception to dive right in is that people who have a disability are at parenting somehow, and that may actually not be the case. can you talk a little about your experience with that? so i have two kids. they're five and the other one is turning seven and about four days. she would like me to count down for you. in fact, as i was this morning, she's like, there's six days until i turn seven. i'm like, i know i'm being a parent who's disabled. doesn't change how parent, except in that you have different coping. and i say that about everything i have different coping mechanisms from non-disabled but what this means is that i have tips and tricks non-disabled parents that work for everybody.

it's kind of like the curb cut effect effect, but for moms, i was talking to a couple of my fully cited, fully hearing mom friends and they asked. me how i keep track of my small little gremlins when they decide they want to go running off into the forest or into the fog. because we live in seattle and i have a parenting hack for you called highly individualized, very brightly colored jackets. my five year old has a dinosaur raincoat that has bright neon green, iridescent spikes. i

the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian: washington, d.c., february 21, 2023. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable kirsten e. gillibrand, a senator from the state of new york, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 9:30 a.m., on thursday, february 23, 2023.that is an isr

life hack for people who loveisr public library like i do most libraries do not get a ton of requests to purchase new material. so if there is a book you're searching for and they don't have it, it may take 5 minutes to fill out the form, but there is a very good chance that they will go out and purchase, you know, the librarian who it is like, oh my god, someone actually cares about the library this is amazing. i'm going to buy this book and well, it's not something problematic or anything. yeah, it's, it's interesting because we're going to this large print conversation a minute. i'm going to jump into this wormhole publishing houses assumptions about who read book reads books. and we both know this. we both work in publishing and

the audience of large print is perceived as old people. so when i was a teenager looking large print books because i could no read the tiny print, i was like, why is it all james patterson? why why can't i get a connie willis in the large print section? why? i don't want to. the da vinci code. i mean, no, she the people who did. but i to read other things. yeah thanks again boomers. right. but the boomers were wrecking for me because they all wanted their large print books. and i was like, i need. but hopefully that is like a wedge that we can now kind of push forward. yes, right. but then add the fact that i'm a mom. do you know what's not printed in? large print. tell us. also, picture books. oh, so every single picture book that my kids have is tiny font and usually it's one tiny font,

which is not so fun for me, for okay, i'm on it. come back to the book for a second. yes. and i want to talk about something that that i noticed the title. so the target is being seen and the subtitle is one deaf blind woman's fight to abortion, which seems like kind of a bold statement. and i think you address this in the book you've certainly talked about in other venues about, you know. what does it mean to end a blossom is a thing that we can even possibly think is possible someday. so why make that the title? well, i don't know if it's possible, but i also think that only way we do it is by working together and able to. ssm is a systemic issue. it's like racism, sexism. these are things that are systemic threats to our society. and yes they're threats because what they do is they tear people apart. they are functions that push people away from each other and cause violence and harm.

so fighting against embolism and trying to end it is similar to a fight against sexism. we would like to end sexism that the thing we would like to do often. can we? i don't know. but i can work to change that systemic problem. and so yes, this is my tilting at a windmill, but it is tilting at a windmill that, i think means tilting at your. and just clear i think it's great because like you said you know is that is the goal whether or not we ever get there like that what we should be fighting for in the same way sexism racism, all the stuff that you know, all these movements that we've seen, you know, in, you know, well, our lives really in different areas. the necklace that i'm wearing is actually connected to that. it's a line from the talmud and the line is essentially, we are neither able to walk away from

the work and we may not be able to complete it, but we can't leave it alone. and is a very bad translation of the talmud. but it's much more beautiful in hebrew. but the point is, is that if you see a problem, you are responsible for helping to fix it. you may never in your lifetime be able to complete the work, but it's your job to try. okay, i would like to reassure everyone that there is a lot fun stuff in the book as well. for one thing, i love all the footnotes and it i really reading it and like knowing you in person, i really felt like it was a great sort of representation. your very unique voice and your personality coming through. so i think that was a, you know, a great achievement and can you talk about, you know, the to write and publish this book like, what were those conversations like in terms of where people are pushing you to do it one way or the other or the biggest fight i had about

this book was footnotes and notes. it's funny you bring that up. it's so academic. i love it. i, i, i am an academic. my editor said that house style was end notes and the email that i sent back was like, think about four paragraphs, but the of the point of that was the point of the footnotes is lost. you use at notes because they're not meant to be actual citations, but they are site commentary that i'm making within the text of the book. when i read the audio book, the two deliberate choice i made was to actually read the footnotes in conversation with the text because that's what they're meant to. do you're meant to go through the book and you hit the footnote and it's something like, by the way, alexander graham bell was an effing eugenicist, so those are the kinds of things that it is. it's not a citation in the same way that you might expect in an academic text, it's site

commentary. and i came to write this book because i'd been writing in the science fiction world, lot of nonfiction for about ten years, and it was all and they were all very angry and they were about various representations that we had of blindness and deafness, our media. i realized i coming around to a central point, but i couldn't make that central point an essay because the essay would be well, 100 pages long. and that's not an essay anymore. so i realized that there was a book there and that the book was fundamentally about how our society and our media and culture is really responsible for the archetype that we have of disabled and how we exist and what our bodies can and can't do. that was the point. now i to prove it, which i think, i did. i think i make a pretty case that what we consume in media is

what is informing how we view people's experiences. yeah, and i think we've seen that that is true in, you know, across a lot of different fields and it's very intersectional and the book talks a lot about that. you bring up a lot of examples of, you know, tv shows, movies that either do or don't represent disability well or like in a realistic way for example. but let's talk about fiction. you have also written fiction and and it's not you know, it's not necessarily all disability all the time even though that is kind of your life all the time. can you talk about some of the favorite fiction projects that you may have worked? so first, i have a novel that came out this last april called sort of the white ubisoft, me play in the assassin's creed sandbox. so i got to write assassin's creed novel, which was really fun. it is the only piece of published work i have that has no disabled characters in it, kind of because.

my argument is everybody in the fourth century was probably disabled, but here we go. i just had a piece come out called lost from the found recollections of the last oracle of reveler in sunday morning transport, which is short story about a blind oracle who solves the mystery of where the other blind women have gone. and i think probably my favorite short fiction piece that i've had come out in the last couple of years is a piece called ocean's 11. we're not ocean's 11. it's ocean's nine. i want to say, regardless, my brain is toast today. it's a silky heist and you can find it in mermaids monthly. and i believe you've also written some tiny fiction under the marvel banner i have you want to about that. absolutely. so i wrote for realm media's jessica jones playing with fire

in. that particular piece i was first blind person to write daredevil in any tie in fiction and, probably any of the regular stuff piece. i don't marvel. please give me daredevil. i'm obligated say that in every interview. i would love that. but yes, please. but that was really fun. and then last year i got to write peggy carter for women of marvel number one, in which. i got to team her up with a disabled spy in vichy france. and she was captain peggy carter. and that was a whole lot of fun to write some. and speaking of other i do want to mentioned everyone here that you were also featured in a documentary short i believe that's correct. and it was all about you and it was all me. it was very strange. it's even after me. it's called elsa. it's on pbs, american masters.

and that was a strange experience to have a camera crew invade my for three days, but it was a disabled director and a lot of disabled crew members and they told my story really well. they deliberately had me take them on a hike where i made a camera crew, chased me through pacific northwest hike for 2 hours. the director almost fell off of a cliff and i had to save. you think i'm joking? i'm not. oh, i believe you. he's trying to stand on a rock. he starts to tip backward, and i'm like, no no, let's not lose the camera equipment. are you. i was going to say, oh, yeah, so think i believe they also got footage of you doing fencing. so did. yeah. can you talk about that a little because that is really interesting as someone who doesn't that sport and doesn't

know a lot about it you talk about it in a way in the book also about sort of well yeah yeah i've been fencing since i was nine. i up a sword for the first time at a french camp in some islands. they just kind of left the swords out for the youngsters, which is how, you know, it was the nineties and i had always wanted to fight with swords. the first time i read tamora pierce's of the lioness quartet, i was like, i want to be that lady. night me. so i did so i fence saber. now i've also hammer which historical european martial, which more heavy lifting, but fencing for me is really exciting because don't actually have to see. the big myth is that you need to be able to see the sword. you really don't. in fact, seeing the can sometimes be a disadvantage

because people can fake you out with them. and my job is to figure out where you are in space sense, where your sword has been and then function from there. so i do a of work with understanding space relationships when it comes to fencing it's really fun for me and also i get to hit people in the head. yeah. no, that's awesome. and i think that is sort of another way in which, you know, people have misconceptions about, you know, other people sort of interact the world based on, you know, whatever they're situation is. i talk about it in the book a little bit. there's a lot of different tropes that sort of attach to different disabilities. blindness has the blind swords trope where a blind person can, you know, just close their eyes. they can kill everyone with their sword or luke skywalker wears a blindfold and that is how he learns how to use the force. there's an inherent belief that

blind people have extra sensory perception based on that whole trope. it's not that we have extrasensory perception, it's that we pay attention to different things and that's sort of underlying that whole concept. you think that blind people smell better than you? it's it's not that we smell better than you. it's that we pay attention, smell differently. so, yeah, there's a significant amount of those tropes that are underpinned by assumption. the other trope that i played with in the book was about how blind can drive cars. a friend of ours will remain unnamed for her car insurance allowed me to drive a car for the research of the book. it lasted about 10 minutes. not because she wanted to stop me, by the way, because i like nope. can't see any of the rearview mirrors. absolutely not. i'm done. yeah. and i think, um, for everyone,

there's. i think there's something to be said for, you know, being aware your own limitations. so even people who are not, you know, visibly disabled or who don't think they have any sort of, you know, issue interact with the world like we all kind of have, you know, you know, a limit right like i can only, you know, even if i can, you know, run i can only run so fast i can, you know, i, i don't want to do a marathon, but i probably couldn't anyway. so i'm not physically able to run 26.2 miles or whatever it is. so i think, you know, it's not necessary. like the big thing i took away from the book is that it is not necessarily about, you know, just understanding, you know, the disabled experience that other people are having. it's sort of learning to see the world or to understand the world in that way. yeah, it's so it'll a lot of memoirs about disabled kitty. the point is often to inspired

by the disabled person. oh, that disabled person everest i can do it to oh that disabled person did x, y and z. i can do it to and i explicitly at the beginning of the book tell people this is not that. please do not go to graduate school just because a deaf blind person did. please do not pick up a sword just because i'm blind i threatened my editor with the idea of the subtitle being try this at home. it didn't take but the fact is is you shouldn't try it at home because a disabled person can do it because everybody's limited options are different. when i talked to graders about disability, i point out to them that everybody's body is and can do different things, at which point usually one of the children will show me that they're their double jointed. and i will say correct. i can't do that. neither can 90% of your classmates. but you can. so bodies do different.

i am a deaf, blind person who can fence not every deaf blind person can or should fence. i have another blind friend who also fences. she's way better at it than i am. so it doesn't you to know your own individual body. that's really what underpins this. it's not about disability or ability. it's about knowing yourself. yeah, i think that's a that's a great statement, a great thing for for all of us to sort of, you know, strive to understand better. i think, um, so what, what is next for you? are you working on more nonfiction, more fiction? both i have a novel that's out on submission right now, which is about a blind woman who can hear the dead. and i really it sells. so there's that. i'm working a nonfiction book proposal now that is a jumping point from the dating and sex chapter. i'm basically proposing doing a

handbook for dating and, sex and marriage for disabled people because spoiler alert, really hard to date when you're disabled and only book that exists about it is literal 1000 page textbook, which i really don't want to hand to somebody if you've just gone on your second date so i've been thinking that we need something a little bit lighter, so it's a little bit more user friendly. so i'm proposing something like that and at some point i want to do some writing on step parenthood because, the specific experience of being a stepmother has been maligned by our media. please go read grimm's fairy tales. but it's it's troubling to me that we malign parent choice in so much when step parents are really choosing to step in and love kids. and that's that's the underpinning.

so why are we people so badly for making a choice love, i have questions you know, that's a great point. and i do feel like that my personal experience. i feel like i'm seeing more media that is, you know, portraying positive definitely the idea of like other found families, blended families or nontraditional family structures. and i feel like that's really good. and i hope that it's, you know, reaching, you know, reaching enough people, um, so you are professor of media studies. um, are there particular things, um, you know, because the book does talk a lot about, you know, tv movies over producing things that might recommend people to check out. now that you think you are interesting or informative. so for people who like horror movies, there is a horror movie called run that is on hulu and it has a wheelchair using actress as the lead. and it is a horror movie

specifically about caregiver trauma abuse trauma. so it's psychological horror movie, i don't recommend watching it by yourself, but it's really well done. the actress is disabled and nails it. there's a moment where she is wheeling frantically across the street and you see a car stop for her and she just the car, the dead eye, like every disabled person i've ever met, it's really well-done and it's well thought out. so that is a horror movie. watch switched at birth is a abc family drama. i know, but they actually did get deaf culture, right? there is a variety of deaf experience on the tv show. they actually think about deaf culture in really respectful ways. and it's the first time that i've seen americans sign language for a full episode on national tv. the politics are a little bit weird, but the disability culture is really solid.

the last thing i will recommend to people which you should buy before you leave the bookstore, is one for all by lily lane. it's a white novel about a character with pots who and it's written by a fencer who fence with yale who has pots. my last shout out be for a nonfiction recommendation which alice wang's year of the tiger, which came out this september it's a memoir by alice wong, who edited the disability visibility. she's a very dear friend and her words really matter. and i think it's a book that everybody should read. okay, awesome. and what are you reading right now, if i may ask? i am currently reading babble by r.f. crank. yeah, how are you liking that? i love it, but i went to oxford for a book, so very academic. yeah, great. well, i think we have some time for a question. the audience, we do have a microphone for folks, since this is being recorded. so who has a question for for

elsa, uh, about. yeah. so the book's about for a little bit now and i'm curious if there are any reactions to it that surprised you or any that, you know, you were more excited by. i had someone walk up to me in a bar about six months ago, sobbing and hugging my book like a teddy bear. and she said that it was like somebody had finally her for the first time. she also was blind in one eye. she had the experience of feeling like somebody had finally talked about her own childhood and. that was a really meaningful moment for. me because the book came out in the pandemic. so i have really had very limited exposure to readers and the fact that the book meant so much to her that she literally it like it was a teddy bear, meant lot to me in terms of funny reaction. and so i will say that there is a one or two star review on amazon where someone says that

the book was hard to read because i have a chip on shoulder and oh honey, i know right? i was like, i think that you didn't read the book with an open mind perhaps because that was kind of what i expected. i expected people to be like you, clearly just don't know what you're talking about. your way too upset things am i really how interested i do feel that is the general attitude of amazon one star review amazon one star reviews for you are absolutely out of your know yeah i feel like there's a certain kind of person who i believe the correct response is okay karen all right so any more questions for our following audience here? powells books in cedar hills. as an educator, what is something that you could go back and just like yell at a teacher or either thank you or why

didn't do this? like, what are things that we could do to better support students? well, for people with disabilities. oh, sure. first of all, i'm very proud of myself for having walked out of pe class in the ninth grade. i had a pe teacher shout. can't you see when i was forced to play badminton? and my response was to do something to show a gesture i can't show on television, walk out because i couldn't see i could not see the birdie. it was unfair. ask. i really thank the teacher who pulled me out of math class in the 11th in the 11th through 12th grade and said this is not kind to you. let's find a solution for your math credit that is actually kind because my brain can't math i failed geometry times in a row and it just was not it was not going to happen. yeah, i still can't do geometry. i have full time career and children and i have never needed

geometry. so the teacher who said, okay, why you do an independent study on cryptography and learn how to make codes with numbers was the right call. i think flexible with your disabled students is really what matters because your flexibility will help them to find what works for them. because flexibility is actually the skill disabled people need to survive. yeah, it's great to have more questions questions that you are what you want. parents to tell their. able bodied children about how to interact with disabled classmates. the first thing i would tell them to be kind. most kids have a response of unkind ness to children who are not like them, especially in elementary grades. so i would them to treat them with kindness. the next thing, i would say is

their adopt dvds or part of their bodies. they are not a part of the world that you get to interact, with and i have a lot of kids who would make noises inside of my hearing aids and. that was a real problem as a kid, i also tell them that it's okay to their classmates questions, hey, how do i play with you? in a way that feels good because i didn't want to play or dodgeball, but i did want to play imagination games on the playground. i did want to run around with my classmates, not having people chase me and pulling out their hands on my peripheral vision, but asking them to figure out how to play with their classmates in a way that's really productive, actually engages play. so that's something i think really matters. and the thing i talk my kids about a lot is that if they're curious about somebody disability, they have to get to know the person first. they can't just be like, hey, what's wrong with your eye?

does that help you to get to know the person? absolutely not. hey, what's your favorite color is a great question. hey, what do you like to play or read or get to know the person before you get to know the disability? because they're intertwined, even for kids. yeah, i think there are two very good lessons here that, that, that everyone can use. one is, like you said, you're meeting for the first time. if you actually do want to get to know like don't point out the that you immediately think is weird about them like ask them what you ask them about themselves and like what you know you know what do you like to do or what are you and what are you interested in? why are you here at the art museum? you know, why aren't you over there at the mona lisa? are you at this weird painting? well, and it's funny, i do a lot of classroom visits. like that's one of that's one of the things that i actually really enjoy is talking to kids. and i have i basically told the

children can ask me any rude question that you ever wanted to ask a disabled person, because i'd rather they did it with me than with a total. and so have gotten everything from a kid just looking at me and being like your eye is creepy. to which i respond, no, this is a color that we can find in nature this eye is the color of the sea in hawaii. it's not creepy. it's actually really pretty to a kindergartner who tried to fleece me for my credit card because well, he didn't believe that i was a grown up because all grown ups can drive according to six year olds, five year olds, not all grownups can drive. i'm one of them. so he wants to see my driver's license. so i pull out my wallet. i'm like, it's not a driver's license. it's an. and he goes, well, grown ups have money. can you show me your money? and then he tries, take the money out of my wallet and i'm like, bill, this magic trick. yeah, that's amazing. kids kids are unexpected, kids

are great, and they're really weird and they're tiny gremlins. they're on your toes. the other thing i think is great about, you know, stuff you said previously is that, you know, it is always good. ask for consent. yes. no matter what the situation is like. and and i think that's sort of another example of, you know, calibrating to understand that world is bigger than you. there are many other people in it with many other different life experiences. and you so your point of view not always, you know, be the right one to put forward in the moment that's what i'll say. and it's also the fact that your experience is not the default. so many people will tell me, oh, i have a blind uncle or i have a deaf uncle and. therefore i can tell you what the disability and at that i'm like so is your uncle me

because. if i am not your uncle then you can't tell me what my experiences, the sliding scale of disability is really vast and the experiences are not. maybe five experiences, but each individual experience is different. there 1 billion disabled people in the and each one of those 1 billion people has a different body a different body experience. yeah. okay, more questions. we have little bit of time left. if you have more questions, we will find things to talk about. yeah, i can, um. i can ask questions. yeah in the second one. i think one. okay. so. oh, sorry. right here. so it's wildly unrelated. no, no, please. what are you getting the children for hanukkah? okay. well, my oldest kid is getting

her first menorah because she's now old enough that she can have the depth perception to light a candle. they are also fortunately not going to watch this. so they don't know that they're getting nintendo switches, but their eighth no present is getting nintendo because both of my children are becoming videogame nerds and great. and i will you why they're getting video games i as a kid was prescribed video games by my ophthalmologist to because my hand-eye coordination was so and they couldn't get me to play games of catch because i was like that's going to fly into my face and then i'm going to get hit in the face and my glasses will and this was the voice of experience. so the doctor was finally okay, just get her. mario so they did. and mario specifically super mario on the super is the thing that caused me to be able have hand-eye coordination. so i am a strong proponent of having kids play video games because it helps their connect

what they see with their eyes to. their hands? yeah, that's great. i mean, i, you know, i believe in i mean, if there any kids watching this, maybe talk to your pediatrician, see if they two will prescribe you a video game, tell your parents a blind lady tv's said you should have a super. yes, i have just caused the audience to pinch their noses. i've done my job. are you also a gamer? i am, yeah. what are you enjoying these days? i am currently playing pantomimes with my husband. he is having to read the script to me because it's hard for me to read. but it's an incredible game. i'm not familiar with that one. can you tell say a little bit about it? what's the name again? cannot believe i'm admitting to this. i am playing game called pantomimed, which is about working with 15th century monks to solve a murder. sure, why not? it's a great. i'm also hades.

nice, which is great. and really hard. and as you probably guessed because i wrote an assassin's creed, i actually do play the assassin's creed games and they're really. do you have a favorite one of those? i think probably odyssey. i really liked odyssey because i got to be a woman running around ancient greece and killing people. yeah, my my wife is she prefers games where she gets to play female presenter character really 100% so yeah she also enjoyed odyssey. valhalla was great too. that's the one that i actually got to write for the story that i wrote a set in the valhalla universe. the only thing i didn't like about odyssey is that it has a plot where you have to steal someone's prosthetic eye and. i don't like games that make me steal people's prosthetics. i wouldn't want someone to steal my prosthetic and then put it where they put in the game. yeah, it's a very bad place. um, so speaking of weird things

that happened, stories. you also very active in the speculative fiction community. um, and some of it is related disability and some of it is not. um, can you talk a little bit about and how you've edited for uncanny. um, yeah i was the nonfiction editor at uncanny magazine for two years and i was the nonfiction editor for disabled people. two stories, science fiction for a year. and you actually, you you picked up the hugo this i picked up two hugos congratulations and then i picked up the third hugo for best fan writer. awesome. and i actually that my editorial work is somewhat linked my activism because when you're an editor your job is to select who's get heard and that's a really big power. and so when i was working on disabled people story and when i was on uncanny in general, my

job was to make sure that people's voices got heard and lifted up above all the noise. and so i took i took that really seriously disabled people destroy was the continuation of the destroyer series and i and dominic parisian, my coeditor wanted to make sure that as many diverse experiences of disability were represented and i think we did that i the awards definitely show that we did that we won three for that series. and it mattered those were voices that had not been heard before. and it's one of the things that's tricky about science fiction because so much of science fiction is written to be about the future and it's usually a future where we don't have people. and so we to take that future and disabled people back in. yeah, yeah, yeah. and those all really great projects and i want to say thank

you for, you know, being involved in all that because i think that has really helped advance the field in way that, you know, people weren't doing a lot of when, you know, when i was younger and reading lot of the older, you know, old white male science fiction, which was, you know, it was good, you know, for certain things. but in terms of, you know, seeing people like me in fiction and, seeing really seeing like other viewpoints represented, it was, you know, it was always know aliens or robots or something really, really out there when was so much that was, you know, on earth that we could, you know, we could still learn from what and i think that this ties even to reality, to current politics, because if you can't see who aren't like you in the media that you're watching or in just the news stories that you you you hear you're not experiencing the fullness of the world. and so much of why disabled

people don't get talked about in our political world is because nobody's seeing us. you haven't seen us in tv almost before, mr. magoo. you haven't seen us in science fiction because we're all dead. you haven't seen us in fantasy because is supposed to be about fun things. and we do show up in game of thrones, but it's not usually fun thing in game of thrones. what is no one is having fun in game of thrones but if you don't see us and we have been intentionally erased i want to make that really clear institute. rationalization did not end institutional it's an institutionalization may have taken a tiny nap but today the mayor of york city made an announcement i think it was last week might have even earlier this week that was planning to institutionalize ill people off of the street because he can

removing their citizenship rights not respecting 5150 guidelines and if we're living in a world where people just imagine that the solution to mental and the solution to disability is to remove us we're in a pretty bad place and so telling stories where we exist a lot because that means that we're seen in future we're seen in present and those things people to want us in the public square know and and i would challenge you even the readers who are here that you know if you can imagine you know all these fantastic things you can imagine there being disabled people in all these fantastic places. okay i'm any audience question is, okay, i save the two worst ones for last. so, so first. so you've been writing for a

while in publishing. do you have any advice for writers, newer writers, maybe people who are looking to you know, start writing, improve their craft? i'm going to keep it specific to disabled young writers because i think those are people who really need to hear from me. and it's that their voice matters and it's that it's going to be a hard road. i'm not going to sugarcoat it because it was a hard road for me. and i heard a lot of people say, nobody's going to read this because it's about disability and nobody wants to hear about, but it's not true or disabled stories that are being published. and there are there is audience for that work. i can tell you that because there's paperback edition of my book and there was a hardcover edition of my book. and so people do want to read these things. they do to be educated. it's not just disabled people read it. yeah, absolutely. and add on to that. i will say that sometimes people if the story doesn't, then

people cannot. yeah, you cannot even you know, they might the readers are not the ones who are necessarily writing. so they can say, i want this kind of story until they see it in existence. and oh yeah, i really enjoy that story. or that is interesting. me now that someone has presented me with it and also editors or people too. and so editors are going to be looking for things that that feel safe to them until somebody sends them something they've really been looking for that they didn't they needed. and so taking those risks really matters. all right. and the finally, i know being online very fraught these days, but can people find online follow you on social, anything like that? everything is on fire. can find me as snark, bat everywhere on the internet. that includes twitter. i know it includes instagram. it includes my website it will see what rises from the ashes on

the internet. i will most likely be snarky about their because i've had that handle since i 17. it's not going anywhere, is there story behind that? there is. so when i was in high school, there is a person in the audience who was for when this actually showed up, when i was in high school. everybody would tease me. i was extremely snarky and it's very, very i'm extremely snarky and. i also had a fondness for the dormouse and the bat in alice in wonderland. and so i would occasionally say, twinkle, twinkle, little bat, i will snark. it's where i'm at. and this is i'm the snark bat because i'm a blind person who uses snark to echolocate those sorry, sorry. oh, no, that's okay. that's the it's a very silly 16, 17 year old me thing that had a

multiple connections jump that ends up with i say something snarky, someone laughs, i know where they are. oh, that's wonderful. and thank you for sharing. and i think, you know, now when we all, you know, see snark back, we all remember that. and maybe even you see the rhyme to ourselves quietly under our breath. also, thank you so much for being here thank you for for the talk thanks to powells hosting us thanks to c-span at least recording this and yeah any final before we wrap up here i appreciate being here i appreciate it people reading the book disabled people do matter, our existences do matter and. i just hope that when people the book, what they do is they take it and they use it to help them. their own perception of the reality they live in because abel ism is a hell of a drag and it is something that is currently affecting the way that you see things. all right, thank you.

thank