Disabled people in Australia not only face poorer education, employment and health outcomes, and experience sustained forms of neglect and mistreatment, they are also missing from our national literature. This project aims to address this problem by investigating who Australia’s disabled authors are, how they have forged their writing careers, and how their impairment shapes their creative practice.
The Finding Australia's Disabled Authors website (www.australiandisabledauthors.com.au) is an accessible website that introduces readers to disabled authors, with brief listings discussing the author's impairment and its impact on their literary craft.
In September 2024, the project team hosted a two-day, online symposium on disability, writing and intersectionality. Papers from this symposium were published in a special issue of the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
Future outcomes include another online symposium about creative writing and disability, a special issue of TEXT journal and monographs on deaf writer Patricia Carlon and autistic writer Les Murray. These outcomes aim to challenge stereotypes about disabled writers, which assists with changing attitudes towards disability in the community.
Australian Research Council (DP240103154)
Project Lead: Associate Professor Jessica White
Email: jessica.white@adelaide.edu.au
