Disabled Writers Scholarship Fund

What do I need from you?

This fall, I am teaching an online creative writing class called Writing the Body. It will focus on two key questions: What does it mean to have a body in the world? How can writers find language for and own the story of their own body?

Disabled voices must be included in this class, and I'd like to offer two full scholarships to disabled writers, totaling $500. By providing the funds for these two scholarships, you'll be supporting disabled writers as well as supporting me as an instructor.

Why is it important?

We need more stories that can illuminate the nuanced diversity of the disability experience. Disabled people account for 25% of the United States population. And yet, writing by disabled authors is painfully underrepresented in the world.

In 2020, disabled poet and memoirist Kenny Fries published "Without Us: Disabled Writers 30 Years after the ADA" in the Evergreen Review that stated:

"In 2017, I created the Fries Test for representation of disability in fiction and film, akin to the Bechdel Test for women. Soon after, disabled writer Nicola Griffith reported her social media call for novels that passed the test garnered fifty-five titles. 'According to Stanford Literary Lab there are about five million novels extant in English,' Griffith wrote in The New York Times. She calculated that 'to proportionally represent the experience and reality of the American population, the number of novels on my list should be 1,250,000. One and a quarter million. And we have fifty.'"

This is not due to lack of ability, it is due to lack of access.

Additionally, many disabled people live at or below the poverty line, making classes like this completely inaccessible. Much like the pink tax (the tendency for products marketed specifically toward women to be more expensive than those marketed for men), there is also what's known in the disability community as the "crip tax," the additional cost that comes with living with a disability because of needing additional care items, such as hearing aids, wheelchairs and other mobility aids that are very rarely covered by insurance.

Who am I?

I am a North Carolina-based writer and instructor with a limb difference. I have been teaching creative writing to adult writers in community spaces (such as arts councils, libraries and senior centers) since 2015. I teach creative writing because I believe we need each other’s stories now more than ever, to encourage empathy and understanding and to appreciate our shared humanity.

I earned my undergraduate degree in English from Duke University and earned an MFA in creative nonfiction at The New School. In 2022 I was named an Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist by the Durham Arts Council.

Other Ways You Can Help

It might not be a good time for you to contribute to this scholarship fund, and I totally understand. But here are a few (free!) ways you can help:

• If you're interested in supporting disabled writers and teachers, follow me on Instagram @alliekirkland, or sign up for my newsletter at allisonkirkland.com

• Spread the word about my campaign/class to others who want to see more work by disabled writers in the world.

• Strive to read more books by disabled writers! Here is a great list put together by the New York Public Library:

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/07/02/books-cele...

Thanks so much for your support!

Allison