Ever wonder where your mind goes during a three-hour surgery sedation? I’m here to tell you I have an exquisite recall of the event. My surgeon begs to differ, but I briefed myself before the propofol ran wild, causing my left arm to freeze before blowing apart.

My manual communication went unnoticed as masked humans sliced new incisions and wrestled out the old implants. I could hear muffled voices discussing the scar tissue of eleven years of wear, just when my cancer was at a crossroads.

I wanted to clean up the room, jigsaw my arm remnants back into the shape of a limb, and drink coffee. I wanted to go swimming at Kepuhi Beach on Molokai, topless, skip my implants atop the water, and let the mermaids play dress up, ready to claim their identity.

That’s when the sea maidens gathered around my bed and took turns reconstructing my arm. Their luminescent eyebrowed tentacles chimed as they swayed around me, never hesitating to moan in a melody so comforting, so soothing, so indicative of their whale gods.

Before the tide subsides, I am welcomed into their nautical world. Do I leave this all behind? The scar-tissued implants, the diminishment of femininity, and the need for caffeine? They’ve transformed my arm into a fin, a sign of acceptance, a vice for survival, how can I not?

—

Want to read more from Suzanne Nielsen? Get your copy of Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems today! Buy now on Amazon

You are also encouraged to listen to Suzanne Nielsen read from her recently published essay from Oleb Books’ latest title, Accessing Parenthood: Stories by and About Parents With Disabilities, during our virtual book launch party, posted on our YouTube channel.

The post Mer-folk Passage by Suzanne Nielsen appeared first on Oleb Books.

“Fox Foxerson” is the brainchild of queer cartoonist, illustrator, oil painter and mental health advocate Christi Furnas. In many ways, Fox is a reflection of Furnas’ own life. Like Furnas, Fox is queer and lives with mental illness. According to Furnas, Fox has opinions, and those opinions can be read in “Ask Fox Foxerson,” an advice column that appears in “Dispatch,” an arts and culture publication based out of Minneapolis. Oh, and Fox is literally a fox — a cartoon.

“Ask Fox” is a satirical column. The questions Fox answers are real, but the answers have a comedic edge to them. In one column, a gay man who calls himself Annoyed Boi asks Fox what to do about his allegedly straight friend who wants to dry hump him all the time.

“I think ‘straight’ is just a phase your flirty friend is going through,” Fox’s reply reads in part. “It’s only a matter of time before they hug, kiss, dance and hump their way to a new identity.”

Further down in the same column, Annoyed Boi is advised to set his boundaries.

“My money is on him denying the whole thing and proclaiming straightness,” Fox writes. “There might even be some derogatory terms toward the queer community. Don’t be reactive, just set your boundaries. Let him know if he ever needs to talk, you’ll be an ear. Because if he’s gay, he’s having a hell of a time coming out of the closet. And maybe it would be more helpful to him to talk it out with you rather than doing the humpty hump.”

Fox’s column may have a comedic edge, but the advice is ultimately sage.

Of course, Fox is just a character. It is their creator, Furnas, who writes all the replies.

Furnas hails from Kansas, but feels that she has lived through enough Minneapolis winters to call herself a Minnesotan.

“I got married 11 years ago,” Furnas tells the D Lit Blog. “My wife is a writer and I’m a professional artist. Historically, I’ve worked in oil, but in 2015 I got it in my head to write a graphic novel about living with mental illness. A Minnesota State Arts Board grant helped get me going on that, so I switched to pen and ink.”

Fox Foxerson began as a mini-comic titled “Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophrenia.” Furnas reports that she is now working on a full-length graphic novel with the same title, in addition to the column in “Dispatch.”

“I didn’t want to write a memoir, but I did want to speak about living with schizophrenia,” Furnas says. “Fox’s experiences and voice mirrors my own. Obviously, characters like Jellyfish Boss Lady, Snake and Worm don’t literally exist, so the book is not a memoir.”

Furnas identifies as queer. She came out in the ‘90s. When she received her mental health diagnosis she was open and honest with her friends and family because, according to her, it made sense.

“I didn’t come out of one closet only to dive into another,” she said. “Sharing my experience with schizophrenia is important to me because I know other queers coming out made a profound difference. It was what shaped the movement to stop HIV, and continues to affect our political climate, and so on.”

Like their creator, Fox is queer. There was no coming out, according to Furnas, Fox just is.

“Fox’s pronouns are they/them,” Furnas said. “I understand the female term for a Fox is Vixen, but Fox doesn’t use she/her pronouns, so there you go. My pronouns are she/her, that’s the one difference between us. If I had been born 25 years later, who knows? Identity is contextual and time is a context.”

According to Furnas, Fox has lived with mental illness their entire adult life, and so their answers to reader’s questions reflects that experience.

“I treasure the response to my comics,” Furnas said. “Largely, it falls into two buckets. People living with severe and persistent mental illness tell me they are happy to see their experience reflected. I hear a lot about how representation helps to start conversations that are otherwise hard. I get, ‘that same thing has happened to me!’ I also hear from parents that their teenager or adult child can really relate.”

Furnas added that Fox is a bit of a know-it-all. They honestly think they are helping people gain a new perspective, though with a sense of humor.

“I hope people can take Fox’s advice with a grain of salt and either LOL, or at least finish reading it with a smile,” she said.

Look for “Ask Fox Foxerson” in “Dispatch” here: https://www.dispatchmsp.com/issue-14-dear-fox-foxerson/

Fox also has a presence on Instagram: @fox_foxerson.

Got a question for Fox? Email them at: foxfoxerson@dispatchmsp.com

For more information on Christi Furnas and her work, please visit: https://www.christifurnas.com/

The post Fox Foxerson: Cartoon Advice Column a Reflection of Its Author appeared first on Oleb Books.

In my home growing up, Thanksgiving was little different for me than any other dinner — the bounty of food and rarely seen relatives notwithstanding. I was as silent as always. I did not speak unless spoken to, and my family had long ago learned not to put this stammering child on the spot by asking him any but the most necessary questions — those answerable by a positive nod or negative shake of the head. More turkey, John? A nod yes. But the follow-up question that everyone else at the table got — White or dark? — was omitted. I got either, or both, whatever my wishes might have been.

A stutterer at meal times can avoid having to talk by keeping his or her mouth full. This tactic is surprisingly successful, but cannot be deployed before the meal actually begins, and in my family, Thanksgiving was the one time each year that saying grace preceded eating. We don’t read it, write it, or think it. We say it. You cannot nod or shake your head through the litany. Someone must enunciate the words, say each clearly enough for all to hear. Fortunately, this task fell onto the patriarch of the clan and not his stuttering eldest son — me. Thank you, God, for the food we are about to eat.

In my boyhood, th- and f-, two voiceless, labiodental, fricative consonants, would have been unsurmountable. Rather than risk embarrassment, I was spared them, even after my father was gone and I, the eldest son, was then the patriarch. My mother assumed that duty until her own passing, and now there are no more Treat family Thanksgivings.

We give thanks at this time of year, in the tradition of the Pilgrims, and it is good that we do. We should give them more often. Whether we say the thanks or only listen to them, they merit our close attention. Thank you. But here is the thing about thankfulness: besides being a word with two problematic consonants in it, it is something you experience alone, even sitting at a table crowded with those people closest to you. It is an emotion, a feeling, and it stops there, within you, and goes nowhere else. But it is also transitive: you are thankful for something — your entire life, or maybe just that plate of food before you. Being thankful means you are obliged or indebted to something outside yourself that, should it disappear, means you need no longer be thankful, only bereft.

This is why we say grace and not just express thanks. “Grace” is a Middle English word with a root in Latin gratus, also the origin of its close cousin “gratitude.” But thankfulness and gratitude have parted paths in how we use them today. In both my traditions — the Quakerism I embraced after a Catholic childhood, and in what lessons I’ve learned in an adulthood spent in and out of recovery for substance abuse — gratitude is something more than a subjective state of being, however necessary it may be to experience it as that, too. Gratitude is a thing, and you must be practical with it and pass it on to others. It is social. Gratitude is not about your obligations or debts. It is not formal; in fact, you often improvise gratitude. It is a call to action. Gratitude may make its first moves within you, but it only becomes real when you gift it to others needing to recognize it in their own lives.

In AA and other twelve-step programs, gratitude forms one side of the coin that is your sobriety. (Serenity is the other.) Our literature puts it this way: gratitude “disposes us morally to act right and emotionally to feel right, to do good as regards others and to do well as regards our own mental condition.” Gratitude is something we practice. What does it mean to be, as we often hear at meetings, “a grateful alcoholic?” It means we have something to share with others. Gratitude is why there is a twelfth step in all twelve-step programs: your thankfulness is ready to graduate into a mission to practice gratitude “in all our affairs,” and those affairs will always involve other people.

Nowadays, some stutterers insist we should be grateful for our handicap. That it teaches us important — sometimes cruel — lessons about the fluent world around us we might not otherwise take to heart. I concede that point. When one of us, Lissa Lange (author of Chicken Soup for the Soul), writes “Without my stutter, and all the emotions and experiences accompanying it, I wouldn’t be as compassionate, patient, and understanding of other people with challenges,” I also understand how empathy ameliorates the world. But that is not where I choose to practice gratitude, because though gratitude might start with me, it does not end there. Rather than feel anger when someone finishes my stammered, incomplete sentence, for example, I will feel gratitude that someone has offered me help, however misguided. I will not feel gratitude that my disability limits me less than other disabilities might, because I am not so arrogant as to assume what any other person with a different disability is capable of. I will be grateful for this one day and of what I accomplished in it — an aware and sharable appreciation made possible.

In my novel First Consonants, my stuttering protagonist Brian is consumed with grudges against the speaking world that make him act out in violence. But late in life, when he sees a sandpiper inexplicably surrender its life to a dog on a remote beach, he realizes his disability could always have been his own sacrifice, and not the cause of anyone else’s. Skeptical of the existence of God, he suddenly finds himself in a state of grace. And for that, he is grateful — if not exactly thankful — because what lies ahead of him will demand just the sacrifice he has postponed.

John Whittier Treat was born and raised in New England, but has lived in the Pacific Northwest for four decades, as well as for years in Asia. He now resides in Seattle with his husband, the mathematician Douglas Lind. An emeritus professor at Yale, he publishes fiction, essays and poetry in addition to continuing his academic pursuits. The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House (Big Table Publishing Company, 2015) a novel of the early years of the AIDS pandemic in the Northwest, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize. He is the recipient of both the John Whitney Hall Prize in Japanese Studies and the Christopher Hewitt Prize in fiction, as well as a Pushcart Prize nomination. He is a 2020 alumnus of Antioch University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and was a 2021 June Dodge Fellow at the Mineral School. A stutterer himself, Treat’s new novel, First Consonants, is the story of a family of stutterers set in the Alaskan outback and will be published by Jaded Ibis Press in 2022. He is excited about his work-in-progress, The Sixth City of Refuge, the story about two young gay men, one HIV+ and the other a meth addict struggling to quit, who leave Los Angeles for rural Washington State and find their lives caught up with the local survivalist subculture. Learn more at www.johnwhittiertreat.com.

The post A Stutterer at the Table: What I Am Grateful for at Thanksgiving appeared first on Oleb Books.

Oleb Books is pleased to be publishing Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems, a new collection of poems by Suzanne Nielsen, who is also a writing professor at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She’s right at home at Metro State, and no wonder: St. Paul is her hometown and she’s a former Metro State student.

Nielsen was born and raised on St. Paul’s East Side, a working class community. She is a product, she says, of the St. Paul public school system during the 1960s and 70s, which she recalls as a very different time.

“For instance, my school had a smoking lounge,” she said. “My parents left my graduation ceremony of over 700 students in 1974 when the hockey team released over a dozen baby pigs onto the main floor. We were rebellious, especially in numbers.”

Looking at Nielsen and listening to her, no one would ever think that she lives with disabilities, but she has in fact lived with depression most of her life.

“My depression is a major player for me,” she says. “I’m somewhat private about it. A dear friend of mine years ago reminded me that the past never leaves, but with time it becomes airbrushed and fades. Years of therapy, swallowing antidepressants, finding a speck of joy among a flea infested mattress isn’t impossible.”

Nielsen admits that she has taken medication for her depression every morning for over three decades.

“I literally have to scrub it off my skin some days,” she said. “And like any irritant it resurfaces like blisters. Or that’s how it maybe feels. Because people cannot generally see this disability, they assume I function without terror and fear.”

Depression is not the only disability Nielsen lives with. She is also hearing impaired. On top of all that, she is a breast cancer survivor.

During her childhood Nielsen had suffered on and off from ear infections. It was on her golden birthday in 1965 that her hearing had become muffled to the point that she thought she was going deaf. She became, as she recalls, a professional head-nodder.

“I didn’t get a formal diagnosis for my hearing loss until 2016,” she said. “After the audiologist explained to me my degree of hearing loss I felt bittersweet about the loss. I felt I received the confirmation I needed to know I wasn’t crazy, and at the same time I needed to adjust to a new instrument: the hearing aid.”

Nielsen does not wear her hearing aids when home alone or when she’s writing. She wears them whenever she’s with people to avoid head nodding.

“For a number of years I noticed a subtle decline in my ability to hear,” Nielsen said. “For teaching this became a serious concern as I was always asking students to repeat what they just said. I hate to say it but after the third ask head-nodding takes over.”

Nielsen urges people who think they’re experiencing hearing loss not to ignore it.

“Listen to your own voice and seek aid,” she advises.

Nielsen discovered that she had breast cancer in 2014 after she had a mammogram and was told that they needed to take a biopsy. The morning after her biopsy she was informed that her breast cancer test was positive.

“I felt a bit dazed, shocked, freaked, scared, but I didn’t buy an urn,” she recalls. “I didn’t update my will. I never liked my breasts anyway so that’s how I went into the news.”

She underwent a double mastectomy and an oral chemo.

“Also an oral medication for five years,” she said. “After my surgery I elected reconstruction surgery.”

She is not undergoing treatment now and admits that her daily life was affected while she was going through the ordeal.

“When something life threatening comes knocking on your door and opens it up without your invitation, life becomes changed, forever,” she said.

Nielsen offers some sage advice to women regarding their health.

“Be your own advocate,” she advises. “Trust your healthcare professionals, talk frankly with them and they will be a tremendous comfort, truly.”

Whatever challenges she may be living with has not stopped Nielsen from pursuing a successful career as a teacher. Metropolitan State University is only blocks from where she grew up, and she enjoys being back in the old neighborhood.

“Being a writing teacher is a huge time commitment,” she said. “Especially if you want to do it justice. Early writers need to take risks, but that’s where I think my mentorship works. My students take risks and as a result they learn resiliency.”

The students are what she likes best about teaching. She likens working with them to watching a flower bloom.

“As corny as that sounds,” she said, “it’s really quite miraculous. And the symbolism of what we feed our souls transforms each flaw into something simply stunning.”

Nielsen describes her poetry as raw, confronting, face to face, and face up angst. All kinds of things inspire her poetry, such as music, wind, sun, barking dogs and sirens.

“The smell of a barbecue,” she added. “Laughter, tears, love, despair, depression, joy, reflection, comedy and tragedy.”

She says that she has always loved reading poetry and started writing poetry while still in her teens. She also writes short stories and even an occasional piece of creative nonfiction.

“I am fascinated by the constraints and freedom of flash fiction,” she said. “To me flash fiction is a story in 500 words. That form is the best of both worlds, fiction and poetry.”

Nielsen urges potential readers to “take a risk” and check out her new collection of poems.

“I do think there is a theme that runs through the poems,” she said. “Sometimes it stands out as joy, sometimes despair. But overall, I think it resonates resilience. Sometimes my poems lean in a political direction, other times the mundane.”

Nielsen enjoys her work greatly, saying that writing saves her.

“It saves me from falling deep into the abyss of life,” she said. “It’s that fundamental.”

Learn more about Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems on our book page, which also lists the booksellers offering the title.

The post Author Suzanne Nielsen: Saved by Writing appeared first on Oleb Books.

The children’s book Reese Has a Halloween Secret, written by Jo Meserve Mach and Vera Lynne Stroup-Rentier, with photographs by Mary Birdsell, is short and sweet — clocking in at just forty pages. The book tells the true story of Reese, a young boy with a disability who, with the help of his loving dad, creates a Halloween costume that includes his wheelchair.

Reese lives with a spinal cord injury caused by a cancerous tumor. He needs to use a wheelchair or a walker in order to get around.

Reese loves Halloween and he loves to build. As the story begins, Reese is excited about Halloween approaching. He decides that his costume should incorporate his wheelchair so he can participate in his school’s Halloween parade. His friends ask him what he’s going to be for the holiday, but Reese keeps it a secret. All will be revealed when the costume is ready.

Throughout most of the book, Reese and his dad work on the costume. Reese himself narrates the story, and there are photos on almost every page. The text is simple and to the point, making it easy for children ages 7-10 to read and follow along. The photos, which are in color, beautifully illustrate Reese and his father’s quiet determination to complete the costume. Their love for each other shines through.

Mach, the book’s publisher as well as co-author, spent 36 years as an occupational therapist. She is very passionate about sharing stories of children with disabilities.

Co-author Stroup-Rentier was a teacher who worked in the fields of early childhood and special education for 25 years. She has a Ph.D. in special education from the University of Kansas and currently works at the Kansas State Department of Education.

Birdsell is a freelance photographer and a former speech and Ttheater teacher.

Reese Has A Halloween Secret is published by Finding My Way Books, a company that shares the stories of children with disabilities. Mach spoke to us about what inspired the book.

“We were inspired by the realization that the Halloween holiday was becoming more and more popular so we wanted to make sure children with disabilities felt included,” she said.

According to Mach, it was photographer Birdsell who saw Reese and his father at a Comic Con she was attending. Reese was dressed as Captain America, and the wheels on his wheelchair were Captain America shields. Birdsell hoped to talk to them, but didn’t have a chance to. The following year, she attended Comic Con again and saw them.

“She told them about our books and they said they’d love to share their story,” Mach said. “They were very involved in the writing process, helping us to be as accurate as possible. They were happy with Reese’s book and bought many copies to share with family and friends.”

Mach reports that readers have enjoyed the book.

“I’ve had fun reading it to classrooms of kids who enjoyed following the clues with each chapter to guess what his costume will be,” she said.

Mach’s work as an occupational therapist has made her feel passionate about including people with disabilities and making Finding My Way titles accessible to everyone.

“We have been very intentional in the design of our books to welcome readers with disabilities,” she said. “The font is easy to read and large. The photographs help tell the story visually to help readers understand it. We have all our books in ebook format.”

Reese Has a Halloween Secret is a lovely book. It illustrates that any child, regardless of disability, can be part of the holiday fun.

The book is available in hardcover and paperback editions on Amazon (link to Amazon). The ebook edition is available in both English and Spanish on Kobo. (Link to English version and link to Spanish version)

For more information on Finding My Way Books, please visit their website at www.findingmywaybooks.com.

The post Children With Disabilities Can Celebrate Halloween Too appeared first on Oleb Books.

In the winter of 2018, Belo Miguel Cipriani, publisher of Oleb Books, was looking for a partner organization to co-produce a writing contest for writers with disabilities. To his surprise, many small and large writing competitions were not interested in adding a contest just for writers with disabilities. They also felt that Oleb Books hadn’t reached the maturity they were seeking in a partner.

“Oleb Books was barely a year old,” said Cipriani, “and with only one title to our name, some of the writing centers and communities told me that they preferred to partner with more seasoned presses. They also weren’t keen on a focus on disability writing.”

So when Cipriani got a reply from Laura Perna and Susie Angel, co-organizers of Pen 2 Paper, one of the largest writing contests for writers with disabilities at the time, he was thrilled.

“After a few email exchanges, we had a conference call,” he said. “By the end of the meeting, we were finishing each other’s sentences and had a plan for an essay contest on parenting with a disability.”

Cipriani is quick to note that Susie had two major immediate impacts on his life. First, she helped him feel comfortable with asking someone with a speech impairment to repeat themselves. Second, she helped him understand the dichotomy of writing competitions.

“Susie was key in allowing me to recognize how writing contests put people into two categories: those who win and those who don’t,” Cipriani continued. “To combat this categorizing, Pen 2 Paper had started publishing a series called Those Who Got Away, which were pieces that weren’t finalists, but still deserved to be celebrated on their site.”

“In a similar way, Laura, Susie, and I wanted to make the process of being published through an anthology more accessible,” said Cipriani. “Laura and Susie began to offer conditional spots in the anthology to a few writers from the personal essay contest. The only caveat was that the writer work with them on developmental editing.”

Cipriani shares that as a result of the additional mentoring Laura and Susie were providing, the project took a little longer to produce — three years to be exact. Yet, shortly after setting a publication date for Accessing Parenthood: Essays by and about Parents with Disabilities, he received an email from Laura informing him of Susie’s passing.

“The entire team was crushed,” said Cipriani. “Susie was the heart of this operation, and we were sad that she wouldn’t be able to join us at the launch.”

Susie loved purple and hot pink, according to Perna.

“She was excited about the customization options on her last power chair, which allowed some pink highlights,” said Perna. “One day she showed up at the office with neon pink hair. She was a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan and in cooler months often wore a leather Boston Red Sox jacket. She wore glasses and a nearly perpetual smile.”

Perna describes Susie as “a workhorse and a perfectionist.”

“She took a lot of care to produce excellent work in anything she did,” Perna said. “We were similar that way, and we often joked about how sometimes that tendency got the better of us and caused undue stress.”

Susie loved dancing and going to baseball games.

“There was a stretch of a few years when she and her husband were constantly going to the Dell Diamond to watch our triple A-team, the Round Rock Express,” said Perna. “She was unflinching in her faith and an active member of the Austin New Church.”

According to Perna, Pen 2 Paper has been on hiatus since closing in 2020, and that will continue indefinitely.

“Even before the pandemic it was clear that it was getting too big for us to handle,” she said. “We had talked about continuing the contest as a much more paired down effort, hopefully one that includes Oleb Books.”

Susie Angel passed on August 20, 2022 in Austin, Texas at age 52. She had been suffering from cancer for some time, though it is believed that pneumonia and the loss of her attendant care were contributing factors. She leaves behind her husband of 30 years, her mother and her stepfather, her sister and brother, plus extended family. She also leaves behind many loving communities in Austin and around the world. For more information on Angel’s legacy, you can check out the tribute the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities published on their website at Coalition of Texans with Disabilities (txdisabilities.org).

The post Oleb Books Mourns the Passing of Susie Angel: Author, Editor, and Disability Advocate appeared first on Oleb Books.

Six years ago, celebrated historical fiction writer Nomi Eve was hired by Drexel University to develop a master of fine arts (MFA) program for the institution. “I decided on a low-residency format because of the flexibility it offers,” said Eve. “Most of the instruction is delivered remotely, but students and instructor still meet in person three times during the program.”

The Drexel MFA degree is comprised of 45 credits, which most students can complete in about two years. It also has the distinction of being only focused on fiction writing, with electives in young adult (YA), historical fiction, and science fiction. During the three residencies, students have the opportunity to meet accomplished writers, as well as meet literary agents in a low-pressure environment.

Another hallmark of the program is its civic engagement mission, which is woven through all courses. Eve said, “We believe that writing is your superpower. And so we really ask our students to figure out how they can use their writing to make the world a better place.”

“They’re coming to us,” she continued, “not only to learn craft, not only to learn professional development, but also to learn how they can use their writing to push a needle on an issue that’s important.”

Inspired by the social justice mission  of the program, the first MFA cohort, which graduated in spring 2021, donated a total of $1,300 to start a scholarship. The program also received an anonymous $50k donation that was combined with the contribution from the students to form the Drexel MFA Gift Fund for Marginalized Writers. The scholarship will fund the entire degree program for a writer with chronic illness or disability, as well as provide the student with a one-year mentorship with iconic disability writer and poet Kenny Fries.

“When I rolled out the MFA,” said Eve, “I really made a pledge to myself that I would find ways to provide opportunity and pathways for people with illness or disability to become part of our degree.”

Since its inception, the Drexel MFA has been gaining momentum and the number of applicants has grown every year. The program only admits 24 students each fall, and, according to Eve, the admissions rate is 60% — with that figure dropping as more writers apply annually.

“My goal is to fund the fellowship so that we can matriculate two students from the MFA Gift Fund for Marginalized Writers every single year in perpetuity,” said Eve.

For more information about the MFA program and scholarship, please visit:  Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing Degree | Drexel Online

The post New Graduate Scholarship Opportunity for Writers with Disability appeared first on Oleb Books.

Poet Flower Conroy has been creative since her childhood. While growing up in New Jersey, she was always making arts and crafts, such as Christmas ornaments and jewelry. She would also draw, making up stories to go along with her pictures, which she stapled into little books. Eventually, she realized that her stories were more like poems, and so she began writing poetry. She is now a published and respected poet, with five well-received books available for purchase at Amazon. Conroy’s work has also brought her acclaim. A former resident of Key West, Florida, she was once the Key West Poet Laureate. She is also a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

“What drew me to poetry is its infinite ability to gather, to juxtapose,” Conroy, who lives with her wife, said in an interview. “Though I didn’t quite have that language/overt sense of aesthetic when I was younger. It was an escape to where there were dragons and enchanted fields. I could be someone else on the page, someone far more interesting than I was.”

Conroy’s latest collection, A Sentimental Hairpin, was recently published by Tolsun Books. In this work Conroy writes about a very personal part of her life with candor: her mother’s stroke and her experiences as a caregiver during the time that her mother was physically disabled. This wasn’t her first time dealing with a gravely ill parent. In her early 20s, Conroy lost her father, who was only 45 when he passed. As she tells it, her father’s heart had stopped. Paramedics arrived and revived him, lost him a second time and revived him again. But the second revival was in-body only. Her father lay in a coma for a year until the family pulled the plug.

“I’ve not wholly recovered from that, losing him so young and in such a graphic way,” Conroy said. “So when my mother went into the hospital for a stroke, I was flipping out. I’m hesitant to say re-triggered, but my mind went there. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. This was during Covid and my mother lives in New Jersey and I was living in Key West.”

Conroy calls the poems that deal with her mother’s illness the “Love in the Form of” poems, because their titles all begin with those words, such as Love in the Form of Bleach, in which she recalls her mother’s visit with a doctor. The poem reads, in part:

“On the video chat the doctor instructs she lift

her arms. Then: Hold them out, like carrying

a pizza box. Now close your eyes.

When she shuts her eyes she lets fall

her arms. Because she’s hard

of hearing, the nurse & I encourage her

to again hold the make-believe box,

Now close your eyes. She cups her hands

to her face as if covering her nose

& cheeks with invisible cheese.

When we finally get her to extend

her arms while shutting her eyes: See

how the right arm hovers lower? She wants

to come home; take a shower; sit in a chair.

I need another day or two.

My laboring’s only just beginning.”

Conroy spoke of how it affected her emotionally to write about the experiences with her mother.

“Writing is what I do, so I would have been more lost not writing,” she said. “I wasn’t overthinking when I was writing them, I was swept up in the moment, I was overwhelming the page with what was going on inside of me.”

Some of the poems, Conroy recalls, were quite angry, such as one where she touched upon the time when her mother’s best friend came to visit after her mother was released from the hospital. The friend brought her mother a pack of cigarettes.

“But that wasn’t ultimately a poem, it was me venting,” Conroy said. “And I allowed myself to write those poems. The uglier moments, the frustrations and griefs and grievances. And what was distilled into poetry stayed and what was emotional vomit went. Reading the poems now there’s a small sense of relief that that has passed, that my mother is healing.”

Conroy points out that there’s a difference between caregiving for someone during an extended stay and caregiving full time. Both her mother-in-law and sister-in-law are disabled, and both have lived with Conroy and her wife for more than a decade. In her mother’s case, there were additional challenges as her mother lives with diminished hearing.

“When I was there, she wouldn’t hear the tea pot screaming in the kitchen, so I’d shut it off,” Conroy recalls. “She had difficulty hearing the doctors. So of course I worried if I wasn’t there, what might happen.”

In addition to the stroke, her mother was diagnosed with diabetes. Now, on top of all the pills she had to take, Conroy’s mother had to prick her finger and measure her blood sugar. But because she was still recovering from the stroke, she sometimes had to prick herself repeatedly until she could get a reading.

“After the open-heart surgery, she couldn’t sleep in her bed,” Conroy said. “She couldn’t bathe herself or get the medical sports bra on without help. Even combing her own hair was difficult.”

All kinds of challenges would present themselves while Conroy was caregiving for her mother. When she was at her mother’s house, she found herself deep cleaning simply because it needed to be done. She found it cathartic to make the house as pleasant and as safe as possible. To that end, Conroy had her uncle install grab bars by the toilet at her mother’s house and did some rearranging so that her mother could get around with her walker.

“I wish I could say I kept myself grounded and emotionally healthy during this experience,” Conroy says. “I mean I did, but not without also self-medicating and the poems address this.”

And yet she found ways to help keep herself in as good a place as possible during this experience. She would call home and talk to her wife, she would concentrate on helping her mother, which she found also helped her. She would write, and writing, she says, saved her.

“I’d go for walks around her yard,” she adds. “I’d gather fallen branches and found myself building what I call a fairy hut in the corner of the yard where I’d leave seeds for the birds and squirrels. My cousin, who’s more like my brother, and his husband would spend the weekend at my mother’s and we’d play Scopa or Shut the Box. Spending time with them was a balm to the soul.”

Conroy’s advice to anyone who might be caregiving for someone with a disability is simple: develop a “do unto others” approach.

“If I had to rely on someone else helping me bathe or dress, how would I want to be treated?” she asks. “To go slow and have patience. To listen and anticipate. Ask for help when you need it.”

A Sentimental Hairpin, as well as Conroy’s earlier books of poetry, are now available through online bookstores.

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Eight books have been chosen to be honored in the 2022 Schneider Family Book Awards — a prize that acknowledges the artistic expression of disability by authors or illustrators who created their work for child or adolescent readers. The awards are administered by the American Librarian Association, and were announced on January 24, 2022, during the association’s LibLearnX, which was held virtually from January 21-24.

Each winner received a prize of $5,000 and a framed plaque. Winners were selected in three categories: young children from birth through grade school, ages 0-8, middle grades ages 9-13, and teens, ages 14-18. The prize winners represent a diverse array of disabilities and cultures.

1. A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Words, written and illustrated by Hudson Talbott and published by Nancy Paulsen Books, is the Schneider Family Book Awards winner in the young children’s honor title. In A Walk in the Words, Talbott shares his own story about facing the challenge of being a slow reader. His love of language and his curiosity got him reading and eventually he became a storyteller, writing more than 27 books for young readers. In the words of his prize-winning book’s description, Talbott discovered he could “paint with words.”

2. A Sky-Blue Bench

A Sky-Blue Bench, written by Bahram Rahman and illustrated by Peggy Collins, was published by Pajama Press Inc. and is also a winner in the young children’s honor title. A Sky-Blue Bench tells the story of Aria, a young Afghani girl who’s excited about her first day back at school since her accident. But Aria is worried about sitting on a hard floor all day with her prosthetic “helper leg.” Aria knows that she will be more comfortable on a bench, and so she sets out to gather materials to build a bench for herself.

3. My City Speaks

My City Speaks won the award for young children. The book was written by Darren Lebeuf, with illustrations by Ashley Barron. Published by Kids Can Press Ltd., My City Speaks is about a visually impaired young girl who explores her city with her father. As they visit various diverse destinations, such as a playground, a community garden, a market and an outdoor concert, the girl describes the things she senses in poetic detail.

4. Stuntboy, in the Meantime

Stuntboy in the Meantime takes the prize for best middle grades honor title. Written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Raul the Third, this novel is the fanciful tale of Portico, a Black fourth grader who is secretly a superhero. As Portico tries to dodge neighborhood bully Herbert and deal with his parents arguing, he becomes Stuntboy, determined to save his neighborhood and his parents’ marriage. This book was published by Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

5. A Kind of Spark

Also acknowledged for best middle grade honor title is A Kind of Spark, by Elle McNicoll, a neurodivergent author. Published by Crown Books for Young Readers, McNicoll introduces readers to neurodivergent girl Addie, who tries to get her Scottish town to erect a memorial when she learns that the town used to burn witches simply because they were different.

6. A Bird Will Soar

A Bird Will Soar, by Alison Green Myers, won for best middle grades title. The book follows the story of Axel, a bird-loving autistic child whose family nest is in danger of falling apart. Myers integrates poetry and science as she creates a character whose disability molds his identity. The book was published by Dutton Books For Young Readers.

7. A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age With Crouzon Syndrome

Taking home the Schneider Family Book Awards for teens honor title is A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age With Crouzon Syndrome, by Ariel Henley and published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books For Young Readers. Crouzon Syndrome is a condition in which the seams of the skull fuse abnormally, which affects the shape of the face and skull. Henley’s book is based upon her own experiences of coming of age with this syndrome.

8. The Words in My Hands

And finally, the teens award winner is The Words in My Hands, which was written and illustrated by Asphyxia and published by Annick Press. Set in a futuristic Australia, Asphyxia introduces readers to Piper, a deaf teen, as she searches for her identity.

Learn More About the Schneider Family Book Awards

The 2022 Schneider Family Book Awards committee is headed by co-chairs Suan Hess, a retired New York City school librarian, and Mary-Kate Sableski, an associate professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Other members of the committee includ Cathy Andronik, Betsy Fraser, Ashley Mensah, Rachel G. Payne, Sharon Powers, Scot Smith, and Alyson Beecher.

All prize-inning books are readily available for purchase at Amazon.com.

The American Library Association has been the voice of libraries for more than 140 years. They support library professionals and the library’s role in ensuring access to information and in increasing learning. For more information on the Schneider Family Book Awards and other programs and activities of the association, please visit https://www.ala.org/.

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I’m an artist living with schizophrenia. I’ve been open about my illness since it began. I’ve painted my hallucinations, spoken on panels and with the press. Since I gravitate to drawing my experiences, the progression to creating a graphic novel felt natural to me. Still, for many writers with disabilities, the process of adding illustrations to prose could feel like a daunting task. While putting a graphic novel together takes time and dedication, with a little planning, it can be done. Here are a few tips to consider if you are contemplating this form of storytelling.

Tip 1: Get feedback

I talked about my illness for years before I wrote any of it down — like beta testing, one could say. I’m also queer, and sharing about life with schizophrenia was a lot like coming out of the closet. Once out, I was out. Then I started putting it to page. 

I shared my graphic novel idea with friends. They loved it. Friends always do, it seems. Positive feedback is important. It keeps me going. While I know that my friends are biased, I pay careful attention to what they understood, and learn from their reactions.

Tip 2: Set boundaries

You must ask yourself, what am I comfortable revealing? A lot of disabilities are more visible than mental illness, but not everything is easy to write about. Like any memoir writer, you need to decide what you want to put out for the world to see.

Tip 3: Fine tune your sketches

While I’ve told my stories many times, writing them out wasn’t easy. I’m a visual person, so I tried to first draw the whole thing. It didn’t work. I had to adjust the form I wanted my story to live in. I developed the style of pictures and how they reflect my words. If you’re not comfortable with drawing, this is the point when you would look for an illustrator. You would look for someone whose style of drawing fits the personality of your story.

Tip 4: Finance your graphic memoir project

I wrote a grant proposal. This forced me to clarify my story idea. It also pushed me to create an outline and to build a process, and my process was bullet points and lists. I made a list of what happens in the chapters. Sounds easy, huh? I’m tricking you. It’s not. But it was the easiest way for me to move forward with my project. This is where I tried to figure out the story’s arc, the beginning, conflict, climax and resolution.

I know this process seems obvious. Yet it was the grant application that got me to focus. I needed to know what I was going to draw before drawing it, and the questions got me to follow a path. As I got organized, I found that it’s easier to backspace on a computer than ink on paper. Even drawing digitally, I suggest writing first. Initially, my writing looked more like a sloppy script than a polished manuscript, but it was for my eyes only. My first draft had ten chapters. My sixth draft had seventeen.

Tip 5: Find a mentor

The grant allowed me to work with a mentor. Our first meeting, he asked me to explain my story. I did, yet he had no idea what I was talking about. I had to develop a pitch that summarized my graphic novel in no more than three sentences.

Here’s what I came up with for my graphic novel: Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophrenia is about a fox trying to survive their first year with the diagnosis. I pull from my experience of symptoms, visiting hospitals, being betrayed, and becoming homeless. I use humor to approach a difficult subject.

While finding a mentor isn’t easy, another option is to have a more seasoned graphic novelist available to run questions by. In some cases, this may have to be a consultant you hire.

Tip 6: Create a drawing schedule

This is tedious, but my favorite part. Having a regular time to work on my drawings helped me to dive deep into the project. It made it possible to build relationships with my characters.  For instance, my protagonist is named Fox. The doctors are drawn as sock puppets. Fox’s nemesis is a dodo bird. I chose to draw creatures and not people because it added a comedic element, it’s fun and it fit the story. This process also helped me realize that words should not describe what happens in the pictures. They need to add something that’s otherwise missing.

Tip 7: Edit your work

I had written the screenplay, had hired the actors, now it was time to direct! Look at your panels and think of different camera angles. See? I told you it’s not easy. Every page and every panel within the page is a composition. When I edit my drawings, I take into account how things are arranged on the page. People read pictures left to right, top to bottom. People pay attention to the words more than the pictures. So be sure your word bubbles are placed so it’s easy to tell in which order to read them. I learned to have consistent handwriting. I wrote every letter in uppercase except the letter “g” because I don’t like the way capital “G” looked. Some computer programs allow you to type the text, I didn’t go high-tech.

Tip 8: Put together a review team

I got a second, third and fourth opinion. I had friends read my thumbnails. I joked that I was writing a book by committee. That’s not accurate. I love show and tell. I love hearing the LOLs. I know I’m doing something right.

This part of the process helped a lot with my first draft. It made me realize that my drawing and storytelling style had changed since I started the project.  For example, there were characters that deserved some background information, like why is Fox’s nemesis so mean? I had to rewrite and redraw to make the book more cohesive. So, yes, I sat down and drew the whole thing over with changes — one page at a time.

The bottom line

Putting together a graphic novel or memoir takes a lot of time and dedication. And in closing, I encourage anyone attempting this storytelling form to not look at the first draft as the final one. I learned that from all the writers I’ve known over all the years. It’s like painting in layers. It takes patience but in the end, you’ll have something beautiful to share with the world.

Christi Furnas is a queer cartoonist, illustrator, oil painter, and disability advocate living with schizophrenia. She has exhibited in galleries across Minnesota and in New York. Her mini-comic Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophreniahas sold locally, nationally and internationally. She currently lives and creates in Minneapolis with her wife, two cats and dog. You can learn more about Christi’s work at www.christifurnas.com.

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