Sean Mahoney is the Founder of the Disability Literature Consortium.
WG: In 2020, the Disability Literature Consortium will be making its fifth appear as part of the book fair at the annual AWP conference. Since many new readers may not be aware of the consortium, can you as the consortium’s founder describe what it is and how it got started?
SM: The Disability Literature Consortium (DLC) was created as an outlet for the written works of writers with disabilities. I was in Minneapolis for AWP15 and as I wandered the aisles I was struck by the lack of disability representation – there was only 1 table that had anything remotely related to disability literature on the floor that year.
The DLC made its AWP debut in 2016 in Los Angeles and we have been at the fair every year since…and we will be in San Antonio for AWP20. Interest in what we are doing has grown with each passing year. At AWP19 in Portland we had our best showing yet in terms of sales and interest, and our offsite reading was a grand affair. And it seems to me that, rather than being perceived as a novelty table at the book fair, we have been embraced by both the disability community who see us as a much needed haven for DisLit and crip culture, and by the AWP establishment who see us as shoring up AWP’s claims of vast inclusivity. It’s a start anyway.
WG: You say that the DLC is an outlet for the written work of writers with disabilities. How can those writers get involved and have their work represented?
SM: We should posit the DLC as a global outlet. We will read your work and try to find an outlet for it. Write to us. Snail mail us. Ask someone you know who may know us. If ‘those writers’ make no effort to reach out to us, then there is no way for us to get them involved…either by offering their work on the DLC table or by putting them in touch with journals and magazines devoted to the work of writers with disabilities. Good old-fashioned email is a start: https://dislitconsortium.wordpress.com/talk/
WG: With respect to AWP, what is the best way for writers to have their books included at the Consortium table. Do they need to have them to you in advance or can writers attending the conference bring them to the table themselves?
SM: I would suggest reaching out to the DLC via our WordPress site (https://dislitconsortium.wordpress.com/). From there we can discuss your work and how to get it onto our AWP table. So yes arrangements have to be made in advance. In the past, however, we have been able to accommodate writers attending AWP with recently published books that they bring to our table. I’d also add that we can always use help at our AWP table, so writers who might be interested to supporting us in that way, should contact us about that.
WG: Speaking of support, all of your work with the consortium must take some funding. How are you able to finance it?
SM: Hmmm…it becomes a fine line I suppose…needling ‘our’ public but not so much that it hurts.
On the one hand we have the disability community at large airing their grievances, and rightfully so, at AWP in general about accessibility. And on the other hand you have tiny associations like the DLC trying to create awareness and provide greater visibility for a movement that struggles year after year with various modalities of acceptability and visibility and inclusion. And since it seems, maybe just to me, that we are so fractured as a movement we are easily manipulated and generally dumped upon or outright overlooked. Like it says over at the DLC website…Portland was our best showing at an AWP event. Why the hell would we, as a movement, want to jeopardize such progress? Instead of just hoping to claim some small bit of figurative territory why can’t we just take it like the damn normies do with their easy strides and deep pockets and big deafening visions. Is this too much to ask?
Yes, it does take funding. And we were very fortunate in our fundraising efforts the two times I think we’ve run campaigns since the DLC’s inception in 2016. Nevertheless, there is a real need now for AWP20 in San Antonio…there’s even an overly impassioned yet enthusiastic plea over on the DLC’s site So…Please. And thank you.