We are pleased to announce our full schedule for Storycrafting Sessions: Disability in Writing, happening on May 30th!
This will be a full day of FREE virtual panels discussing various aspects of effectively writing disabled characters, building accessible worlds, and writing while disabled.
Storycrafting Sessions: Disability in Writing is focused on highlighting disabled authors sharing lessons from their real, lived experiences as well as their writing careers. We are thrilled to spotlight these authors and work with them to bring better disability representation–and solutions for disabled authors looking to get more done–to publishing.
We have five topics selected by our members (all times are in EST, and you can click on the title of any panel to grab your ticket):
11AM – 12PM Avoiding Cure Narratives and Other Harmful Disability Tropes
12:30 – 1:30PM Accurately Depicting Chronic Pain: What We Wish Writers Knew
2 – 3PM Prosthetics, Glasses, and Other Disability Aids in SFF
3:30 – 4:30PM Romance While Disabled: What To Consider When Writing a Disabled Love Interest
5 – 6PM Accommodate Yourself: How To Build a Writing Space and Process That Works For You
We’ll also have lots of conversation happening in our Weeknight Writers conference Discord, including an afterparty from 6 – 7PM. All ticket holders will receive a link to the Discord along with their panel invitation links.
Storycrafting Sessions are free, but there are costs involved in hosting and a lot of work goes into making them happen. You can help us offset these costs–and ensure that we can continue running events–by grabbing a Supporter Ticket for one of our panels or joining our Weeknight Writers Pro community. Attendees with Supporter Tickets and Weeknight Writers Pro members also get access to the Conference Companion, a printable mini-workbook designed to help you get the most out of the conference.
More about our panels
Avoiding Cure Narratives and Other Harmful Disability Tropes
11AM – 12PM EST
From magical cures to villains whose evil comes from their disability, media has long been permeated by harmful tropes about disability. We’ll talk about some of the most common disability tropes and why they’re harmful, plus how to avoid them–and harmful disability narratives more generally.
Moderator: Dianna Gunn
Panelists: Eva Roslin, Elise Scott, E.M. Anderson, Tanya Gold
Accurately Depicting Chronic Pain: What We Wish Writers Knew
12:30PM – 1:30PM EST
Chronic pain permeates your life–but fictional depictions often fall short of fully representing this reality. We’ll discuss existing chronic pain representation–the good, the bad, and the ugly–and how writers can build characters whose struggles with chronic pain reflect the struggles of chronic pain sufferers in the real world.
Moderator: Dax Murray
Panelists: V.M. Ayala, Felix Graves, Sabina Nordqvist, Machelle Berglund
Prosthetics, Glasses, and Other Disability Aids in SFF
2 – 3PM EST
Magic and scifi technology provide endless opportunities for unique and interesting disability aids. We’ll talk about some of our favourite disability aids from existing media, plus strategies for creating unique disability aids that fit your story and worldbuilding.
Moderator: R. Haven
Panelists: Stephen Graham King, Jeané D. Ridges, Elliott Dunstan, S.M. Reiher, Dianna Gunn
Romance While Disabled: What To Consider When Writing a Disabled Love Interest
3:30 – 4:30PM EST
Romance–and especially intimacy–often look different when you’re disabled. We’ll discuss what these differences look like in the real world, how existing media often fails to reflect those differences, and how writers can create respectful and realistic depictions of disabled folks in romantic relationships.
Moderator: Jade Benjamin
Panelists: Cait Gordon, Nikki Flynn, A.E. Bross, Jaye Viner
Accommodate Yourself: How To Build a Writing Space and Process That Works For You
5-6PM EST
A lot of common advice for writers simply doesn’t work for disabled people, forcing us to find our own strategies that do. We’ll share how we’ve built our writing spaces, habits, and processes that work for our disabled brains and bodies–and how other writers can do the same.
Moderator: Jade Benjamin
Panelists: V. Astor Solomon, M.S. Ocampo, Anna Holmes
Storycrafting Sessions FAQ
What does free-first mean?
Free-first means you can attend this event for free! Free tickets are available for all panels. This is part of our efforts to make educational resources and support available to ALL authors, especially working-class and poor authors.
However, a lot of work goes into these events – in fact, Storycrafting Sessions are our most labour-intensive events to create. So we offer Supporter Tickets for folks who want to pay us for the time and energy we put into these events.
Supporter Tickets also include a Conference Companion printout you can use to guide your note-taking process.
You can buy Supporter Tickets directly from the event pages for each panel OR sign up for the Weeknight Writers Pro Community for automatic entrance to all of our events plus year-round support like nightly accountability check-ins, weekly virtual write-ins, and monthly socials.
Will these panels be recorded?
All Storycrafting Session panels are recorded. Recordings are released to the Weeknight Writers Pro Community a few weeks after the event and become publicly available on our YouTube channel two to three months later.