Book announcement!!
Usually, it feels like my most pressing updates are about the tiny little watermelon growing in our garden or the baby roots growing from the pothos Khalil and I propagated. But, surprisingly, we will be taking a month off from nature drama in this newsletter. Rest assured that Khalil is still joyful, our yard is still Eden, and I am still disabled.
As I’ve shared, Caroline and I wrote our picture books, This Is How We Talk and This Is How We Play because we were looking for books with families like ours and didn’t find any. We interviewed dozens of families with disabled people in them and created celebratory books illustrating the beautiful ways people play and communicate.
The first page of This Is How We Play features my dear friend, Sarah Coglianese, who died from ALS in late 2018. In the illustration, she is in her wheelchair in San Francisco with her beloved daughter Scarlett on her lap.
Over time, as we wrote and planned, Caroline and I started to share with one another the stories about how we became parents. Those stories began with meeting our partners: David and Kevin. We talked about dating and our old profiles. We talked about casual sex and crushes and what it had felt like being disabled people navigating dating with mostly non-disabled friends. The shame, the safety concerns, the necessary but privacy-invading health disclosures to potential hookups.
We commiserated about how alone we felt during those years. Finally, one of us said, “we should write about this.”
We drafted a proposal and wrote sample chapters, and, after months of hard work, presented it to our agent. We wanted something fun and accessible but honest. Something that didn’t shy away from the systemic injustices that dehumanize, desexualize, and endanger disabled people. We also wanted joy. Disability isn’t a tragedy, and our love lives are beautiful, sexy, and, often, hilarious.
Our agent loved the proposal and shared it with the inimitable Renée Sedliar at Hachette Go. Renée saw our vision immediately and set up a call. While preparing for the meeting, I re-read Renée’s bio and was touched and amazed to see that she had worked with Sarah Coglianese in the early 2000s. She knew my friend.
As I have done countless times since becoming a writer, I imagined telling Sarah about writing a new book and about meeting Renée. She would laugh and tear up from pride and probably share with me a funny story from her years in publishing.
So, it’s official, Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down while Chronically Ill and Disabled will come out in 2024, published by Hachette. We are delighted.
In the meantime, please reach out if you identify as disabled, chronically ill, Deaf, or neurodivergent and are available for an interview.
Thankful for all of your support, as always.
[Standing ovation!] I look forward to reading it.