20 Canadian books to mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Dec. 3, 2024 is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
We've put together a list of 20 Canadian works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and books for young readers to highlight disabled writers and stories about disabilities.
The Nowhere Places by Susan LeBlanc
The Nowhere Places is a novel set in 1979 North End Halifax that revolves around two women, June and Lulu, and the chaos that transpires when Gerald, a developmentally disabled adult, goes missing. June is his mother, who raised him alone and unwed, and Lulu is a teenager who works at the pharmacy with him. The novel brings them together and shares stories of girlhood and womanhood as they both try and figure out what they are capable of.
Susan LeBlanc is a Dartmouth, N.S.-based writer. She worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist for 20 years and taught journalism at the University of King's College. She was shortlisted for the Budge Wilson Short Fiction Prize in 2018 and was selected for the 2022 Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program.
Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson
Blackheart Man is a fantasy novel about the magical island of Chynchin. It follows Veycosi who is training as a griot (historian and musician) and is hoping to score a spot on Chynchin's Colloquium of scholars. When children start disappearing and tar statues come to life, it's clear that sinister forces are at play — the demon called the Blackheart Man is causing trouble.
Nalo Hopkinson is the author of many novels and short stories, including Brown Girl in the Ring, which won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest and was defended on Canada Reads in 2008 by Jemeni. Her other books include Sister Mine, Midnight Robber, The Chaos, The New Moon's Arms and Skin Folk. In 2021, she won the Damon Knight Grand Master award, a lifetime achievement award for science fiction. She has ADHD and Nonverbal Learning Disorder.
The Monster and the Mirror by K.J. Aiello
In The Monster and the Mirror, K.J. Aiello tells the story of their life through the magical tales that helped them during their struggle with mental illness. Blending memoir, research and cultural criticism, the book dives into stories like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones to look into our perceptions and stereotypes when it comes to mental health.
Aiello is a Toronto-based writer whose work has been published in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Chatelaine, The Walrus and This Magazine.
i heard a crow before i was born by Jules Delorme
i heard a crow before i was born is a memoir in which Jules Delorme shares his difficult upbringing from resentful and abusive parents. He also pays homage to his tóta (grandmother) and the many animal protectors that helped him be strong enough to move forward — and reflects on the intergenerational trauma from residential schools that continues to affect his family.
Delorme is a neurodivergent Kanien'kehá:ka writer who grew up on the Akwesasne Reserve. His other books are faller and Ahshiá:ton (You Should Write It). He is based in Toronto.
Mad Sisters by Susan Grundy
Mad Sisters is a memoir that explores Susan Grundy's experiences as a caretaker for her older sister with schizophrenia after their parents move away. With compassion and resilience, the book explores the collateral of mental illness and complex families while shedding light on the lack of resources in the mental health care system.
Grundy is a writer who formerly worked in marketing. Her work has been published in The Danforth Review and Montreal Writes. She lives in Montreal and London, U.K.
Living Disability: Building Accessible Futures for Everybody, edited by Emily Macrae
Living Disability brings together diverse disabled perspectives to explore how urban systems can be accessible to all populations. Including both essays and interviews, the book brings research together with lived experience to share stories and strategies for an inclusive future.
Emily Macrae is a disabled writer and organizer. Her work has been published in Canadian Architect, Spacing and NOW magazine. She is based in Toronto.
I Hate Parties by Jes Battis
I Hate Parties is a collection of 50 poems on Jes Battis' experiences of being queer, autistic and nonbinary. Focusing on the feelings of intense anxiety that come with growing up in the nineties in Canada as a marginalized person, Battis writes of adolescence, queer parties and panic attacks through metaphor and honest verse.
Battis is a writer and teacher at the University of Regina, splitting their time between the prairies and the west coast. They wrote the Occult Special Investigator series and Parallel Parks series. Battis' first novel, Night Child, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. Their novel The Winter Knight was on the Canada Reads 2024 longlist.
Bad Weather Mammals: Poems by Ashley-Elizabeth Best
The poems in Bad Weather Mammals reflect Ashley-Elizabeth Best's own experiences with disability. The poems look back at her childhood, but also her adulthood and even her relationships in her community. The poet explores in a variety of formal constraints both the joys and devastation of living with a disabled body.
Best is a poet and essayist from Kingston, Ont. Her debut collection of poetry, Slow States of Collapse, was published in 2016. Best's chapbook Alignment was published in 2021. That same year, she was also a contributor for Resistance, a collection of poems curated and edited by Sue Goyette. Best was on the longlist for the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize.
echolalia echolalia by Jane Shi
In echolalia echolalia a collection of poems that focus on the body politics and the experiences of being queer, disabled and in the diaspora. Reflecting on her own identities, author Jane Shi writes about chosen family and resisting colonial projects and ideologies that seek to dehumanize.
Shi is a writer and poet based in B.C. Her writing has appeared in the Disability Visibility Blog and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry. Shi graduated from the Writer's Studio Online program at Simon Fraser University and StoryStudio Chicago. She is the winner of The Capilano Review's 2022 In(ter)ventions in the Archive Contest.
Under All the Lights by Maya Ameyaw
When Ollie Cheriet's song becomes popular online he's approached to write an album, go on tour and fulfill all his dreams as long as he can learn to manage his stage fright. As the pressure of being in the spotlight grows, his new touring partner Jesse begins to make him feel more at ease. In the coming-of-age YA novel Under All the Lights Ollie explores what it means to be an artist in the spotlight while he learns more about his anxiety disorder and bisexuality.
Maya Ameyaw is a writing instructor and author based in Toronto. Her books include the YA novel When It All Syncs Up and the anthology Brilliance is the Clothing I Wear.
Never Been Better by Leanne Toshiko Simpson
Each with their own struggles that landed them in the psych ward, Dee, Misa and Matt became inseparable friends in Never Been Better. When Misa and Matt are set to be married at a destination wedding a year after being discharged, Dee arrives with her own form of baggage. She's in love with Matt, and unlike everyone else attending the wedding, Dee knows how Misa and Matt met. Telling them would jeopardize not only their friendships but mutual support systems — but Dee will have to decide what matters most.
Leanne Toshiko Simpson lives with bipolar disorder while teaching at the University of Toronto. She was Scarborough's Emerging Writer in 2016 and was nominated for the Journey Prize in 2019. She was named a writer to watch in 2024 by CBC Books. Never Been Better is her first novel.
Play by Jess Taylor
Paulina "Paul" Hayes spent much of her childhood playing in The Lighted City, an imaginary place with her cousin Adrian. Decades later and struggling with PTSD, Adrian's death and constant reports of missing children, the novel Play finds Paul returning to her hometown and the ravine of The Lighted City in order to come to terms with "the day everything happened."
Jess Taylor is a writer and poet based in Toronto. Her previous short story collections are Pauls and Just Pervs. The title story of Pauls won the 2013 Gold Fiction National Magazine Award, while Just Pervs was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Fiction. Play is her first novel.
Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin
Interesting Facts About Space tells the story of Enid, a space-obsessed, serial-dating lesbian who's deaf in one ear. With a penchant for true crime podcasts, she can easily handle the vastness of space and gruesome murder details. But she's got one major phobia: bald men. And while she desperately tries to keep it under control, she can't shake the feeling that someone is following her.
Emily Austin is a writer based in Ottawa who studied English literature and library science at Western University. She is also the author of the novel Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. Austin was a juror for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.
A Fate Worse Than Death by Nisha Patel
A Fate Worse Than Death is a poetry collection that uses the author's own medical records to investigate the worthiness of the disabled life. It explores how her multiple disabilities affect her daily life and shows how poetry allows her to offer complexity to her experiences — her pain, sickness, anger but also love.
Nisha Patel is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Edmonton and a Canadian Poetry Slam Champion. She is the author of Coconut. A disabled and queer artist, she won the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal and the Edmonton Artists' Trust Fund.
I Will Get Up Off Of by Simina Banu
I Will Get Up Off Of is a poetry collection about trying to leave a chair. Bound by anxiety and depression and looking for hope everywhere from fitness influencers to psychics, the poems eventually become more and more desperate and highlight the importance of art when it comes to survival.
Simina Banu is a Montreal-based author. Having published two chapbooks before, her first full-length collection of poetry was POP. Her poetry has appeared in filling Station, untethered, In/Words Magazine and the Feathertale Review, among others. Banu was a reader for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.
I Don't Do Disability by Adelle Purdham
Adelle Purdham shares her experiences parenting a child with Down syndrome in I Don't Do Disability. A raw portrait of mother-daughter relationship and unlearning ableism, Purdham tells candid stories that make us consider the flaws in society.
Purdham is an Ontario-based writer and disability advocate. She has an MFA in Creative nonfiction and teaches creative writing at Trent University.
When We Were Ashes by Andrew Boden
In the historical fiction novel When We Were Ashes, Rainor Schacht revisits his past as a child in a ward for disabled children in a remote hospital called Trutzburg in Nazi Germany. Rainor sets out to find another survivor, Emmi, after discovering the kind bus driver's coded diary, and the two piece together their fragmented memories of a horrible place.
Andrew Borden is a B.C.-based writer. His work has been published in the Journey Prize Anthology, Prairie Fire, the New Quarterly, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine and Descant. He co-edited the book Hidden Lives: Coming Out on Mental Illness.
There Is No Blue by Martha Baillie
There Is No Blue is a memoir comprising three essays about three significant losses Martha Baillie experienced. It's a response to the death of her mother, father and sister, who had schizophrenia, as well as ruminations on what made them so alive.
There Is No Blue won the 2024 Hilary Weston Prize for nonfiction.
Baillie is a Toronto-based writer. Her novel The Incident Report was on the 2009 Giller Prize longlist and is being made into a film. Her other books include Sister Language and The Search for Heinrich Schlögel.
Beryl by Dustin Galer
Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist shares the biography of disability activist Beryl Potter. Following an accident that led to Potter becoming disabled, she chose to devote her life to advocating for other people with disabilities and bettering their lives. Dustin Galer details the contributions that Potter made, and the obstacles she faced and overcame in her devotion to disability justice.
Galer is a Toronto-based historian and writes about disability history and labour. He is also the author of Working Towards Equity, which details the history of the Canadian disability rights movement.
Butt Sandwich & Tree by Wesley King
In the middle-grade novel Butt Sandwich & Tree, Green and Cedar are brothers with a strong bond but who are quite different. While Cedar is a popular basketball star, Green, who is on the autism spectrum, doesn't really care about sports or making friends. When Green becomes the number one suspect when a necklace goes missing, the two brothers team up to solve the case themselves and embrace how their differences bring them together.
Wesley King is a Nova Scotia children's writer whose books include middle-grade novels The Vindico, Sara and the Search for Normal, A World Below and OCDaniel. King co-wrote The Wizenard Series, a children's book series about magic and basketball, with NBA legend Kobe Bryant.
