Reviewed by Michael Northen
In 2017, Annie Carl, a writer with lipomeningomyelocele and owner of the Neverending Bookshop in Edmonds, Washington, attended a trade show for booksellers in the Pacific Northwest with the hope of finding work by other disabled writers, particularly in the area of science fiction and fantasy in which her bookshop specialized. To Carl’s chagrin, she found nothing. No one was there to represent disabled writers, not other store owners, publishers, book sellers, or panelists. Coming out of that trade show, Carl was determined to do something about that. The result is Soul Jar: Thirty-one Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors.
In fact, Science Fiction and fantasy are literary genres that have appealed to disabled writers for quite a while as work by novelists like Kristen Ringman and Dora Raymaker witness, but gathering together enough short fiction for an anthology can be challenging. In part this is due to the largely white, male community from which science fiction has emerged. Rather than inviting disabled writers into the future, much sci-fi looks at ways to eliminate disability. As Carl states in her introduction, “rarely are we allowed, let alone invited to exist in these realms…We deserve to be ourselves in magical lands and aboard spaceships.” (p. xvi)
Not surprisingly, then, Soul Jar is more concerned with providing the opportunity for disabled writers to have their work in print than it is with advocacy or the presentation of a disability point of view. The stories are as varied as the writers in the anthology. A few make disability issues their focus, others allow a disabled character to make an appearance, and many have no overt reference to disability at all. Instead, as Carl writes, “Within these pages you will find mermaids, dragons, merchsuits, spaceships, imaginary friends and demons raised from cereal box toys.” This “Glorious Symphony,” as Nicola Griffith calls it in her foreword, is divided into four sections (“Earth in Retrograde,” “Gone Astray,” “Wild Space,” and “Creature Feature”) inviting the reader to jump in at whatever strikes their fancy.
One of my favorite stories in the anthology is “Survivor’s Club” by Meghan Beaudry. It is well written with an engaging narrator; it features a disabled character, and it raises some current controversial issues. The tale takes place in a future where a “caelivirus” with no apparent cure is ravaging the human population. Parallels with the COVID-19 virus and the disposability that many disabled people have felt during the pandemic are omnipresent in the story. An unnamed, quick-witted narrator who has been through a double lung transplant expresses these concerns:
“Just the infirm and the elderly are dying,” they told us in the beginning. Just. That’s what everyone says at first. As if us sick people were just hanging on to our mortality by a thread anyway, waiting for a good stiff breeze to blow us over the edge. As if this virus was doing society a favor by getting rid of us. (p. 22)
The story’s title turns on the idea that it is the “hanging by a thread crowd” who actually understand what it takes to survive under these circumstances:
I’ve been in quarantine long before most people, and I’ll be here long after they’re gone. Sick people won’t tell you, but I think most of us feel this way. Quarantine is the world we’re used to. Everyone else is just visiting here. We’ve been down this road before, and damn if we don’t know where the potholes are. (p. 23)
In addition to calling out ableism, Beaudry infuses her story with a sense of humanity and compassion–qualities not always typical of sci-fi writing and much in need during these days.
A complete contrast to Beaudary’s story is Andrew Griffin’s offering, “Everyone’s a Critic,” in which a young prince recognizing that he is simply a fictional character in a fantasy tale talks back to the bumbling author. Griffin draws the reader in by leading them to believe it is a traditional third-person narrative, then switches to italics when he answers his own character.
Eryn stared up at me. “You’re the one who’s responsible for all of this?”
Yes. I am.
“And why did you make me aware of the nature of my world? Why did you do this to me?”
I shrugged. I had an opening line that I liked.
While it is hardly a new technique (think Pirandello), this approach provokes a reader to consider issues of creative composition and, by extension, ontological and existential concerns. Somewhat unexpectedly, Griffin also makes the case that sometimes art is just created for the fun of it.
A final example of a story that caught my attention is Julie Reeser’s “A Peril of Being Human.” The central character is a therapist who is a shape-shifter. Part of what makes her successful in her work and relationships is that her appearance modifies to take on the characteristics of the person she is with. It is more than Eliot’s “to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” At its center, the story is about identity–something familiar to the disabled community–and posits a number of questions likely to challenge a reader to reflect such as, “Who am I if I’m not what others see?” It is a compact, well-paced story that I won’t spoil by revealing the ending.
Not all of Soul Jar’s thirty-one stories are of the caliber of Beaudry’s, Griffin’s, and Reeser’s. They range from writers whose work is familiar to the disability community like Nicola Griffith and Nisi Shawl to those who are being published for the first time. Nevertheless, given the range of subject, style, and story length, almost any reader will find something that sparks their imagination. Carl deserves credit for making the work of these writers available to a planet full of readers.
Of course, simply putting an anthology together does not in itself get a book out to the public; it also depends upon a publisher willing to take a chance. As Carl relates it, after her discouraging experience at the Pacific Northwest trade show, someone did “magically come out of the wood” after having seen her on a panel.
What actually happened was Laura Stanfill, publisher at Forest Avenue Press, came rushing over to me as I packed up in a huff.
“We need to talk,” she said.
And we did. (p. XV)
It is because of the willingness of publishers like Stanfill who are not specifically focused on disability writing to come out of the woodwork and take a chance that disabled writers are getting a chance to be read. We all need to support their work.
Title: Soul Jar: Thirty-one Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors
Editor: Annie Carl
Publisher: Forest Avenue Press
Date: 2023
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About the Reviewer
Michael Northen was the facilitator of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop from 1997-2010 and the editor of Wordgathering from 2007-2019. He was also an editor of the anthology, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and the anthology of disability short fiction, The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (both from Cinco Puntos Press). He is currently working on Every Place on the Map is Disabled, an anthology of disability poetry to be published by Northwestern University Press in 2026.