Welcome to the first interview in my series of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations.

I sit down with a wonderful Writerly Love membership community member, Shantell Powell, a two-spirit author, artist, and self-described swamp hag who grew up on the land and off the grid. Her publication credits include Augur, Solarpunk Magazine, MetaStellar, The Deadlands, and honestly keep racking up—we talk about how she does this in the episode, and she has an excellent hack for writers with ADHD to track submissions that I think is brilliant and would be helpful to many writers, myself included.

We get into her often very visceral writing; she reads a piece that I would describe that way, visceral, and speculates a little about why that flavour comes out in her work. For this series and focus, we talk about how she works with her various limitations and disabilities, which include neurodivergence and now long COVID-19, among other conditions and limitations.

Listen in to hear from a singular writer whose writing practice shows that there is not one way to be a writer.

Show notes: https://rachelthompson.co/91

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This is the seventh, wow!, in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with our cover artist, Amy Friend, who was also the cover artist for the very first issue I edited for Room, called Mythologies of Loss.

Amy Friend’s art truly resonates on a deep level of nostalgia and grief with me, and also because of the incredible artistry she does with photographs, turning those difficult experiences into beauty.

Clearly, we’re vibing even over a decade of editing for Room, in those themes of loss and longing. I spoke with Amy Friend about how she makes her photographs, what draws to these themes, and how photography as a medium inherently communicates memory, loss, and absence.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/86

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Welcome to the next instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities.

In this episode, Crystal Randall Barnett, a member of my Writerly Love Community, adds to the conversations we’ve been having in this series of episodes on writing slowly and listening to your body.

Crystal Randall Barnett is an emerging writer from Ontario. She has been published by The League of Canadian Poets and Blank Spaces and her first-place short story appeared in a 2023 fiction anthology from Chicken House Press. Her writing is physically impacted and creatively influenced by her disability, Persistent Post-Concussion Syndrome.

Crystal shares how she adapted her reading habits when her experience of persistent post-concussive symptoms made reading on the page a barrier. She also shares a simple hack to make audiobooks even more accessible—one I’ve implemented for myself.

And she reads from a poem I had the pleasure of publishing as an editor with Room.

All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/95

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Sign up for my Writerly Love Digest, which is sent weekly and includes support for your writing practice, prompts, and lit mag publications.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.