Support underrepresented LGBTQ+ disabled writers.

All donations are tax-deductible through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas.
Bodies Beloved is community-led through disability justice and mutual aid principles.

Your Support Brings LGBTQ+ Disabled Writers to AWP Bookfair, One of the Largest in the World.

March 26-29, 2025

Your contribution funds honorariums, accessibility, and career-changing opportunities for disabled writers.

Advance Representation. Create Economic Access. Fund LGBTQ+ Disabled Writers.

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it's to imagine what is possible”
— bell hooks, writer

Help Bring More LGBTQ+ Disabled Writers to the AWP Literary Conference Bookfair
March 26-29, 2025 I Los Angeles Convention Center

Book Signings + Open Mic + Interactive Community Art Installation

What Your Contribution Covers

$25 Covers a book signing space for an LGBTQ+ disabled writer to present and sell their work.

$50 Supports accessibility needs like wheelchair-accessible transportation or ASL interpretation.

$100 Covers the wholesale cost of books, ensuring writers can sell their own work and build economic agency.

$250 Funds honorariums for writers to attend the bookfair or conference, improving opportunities.

$500 Funds accessible travel and accommodations for a writer to participate fully.

$1,000+ Supports a major literary event uplifting LGBTQ+ disabled representation through access, representation, and direct mutual aid for writers.

DID YOU KNOW?

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
— Audre Lorde

  • LGBTQ+ disabled writers are among the most underfunded in literature, often unable to afford their own books to sell at key events—limiting their economic opportunities.

  • Disabled—including chronically ill and neurodivergent—writers often miss out on book tours and events due to inaccessibility, limiting their ability to reach readers.

  • 1 in 4 households in the U.S. have at least one family member with a disability. Federal underfunding puts people with disabilities at an higher risk of homelessness. 

  • Trans, Black, Indigenous, and undocumented LGBTQ+ disabled writers face the greatest risks and barriers.

  • Every contribution helps us provide:
    Honorariums for underfunded LGBTQ+ disabled writers
    • Writer honorariums
    • Wheelchair-accessible transportation & ASL interpretation
    • Travel & materials
    • A platform to amplify LGBTQ+ disabled representation at a major literary events

    Every dollar moves us closer to a world where ALL stories are valued.

    Donate Now

  • On February 13, 2025, the White House site’s “health” commission chillingly declared that disabled people, including physical disability, mental illness, chronic illness, & neurodivergence— are “a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.”

    This is eugenics language.

    Our existence is a gift.

    The Reality

    • Executive orders are stripping trans people of medical care and rights, escalating anti-trans violence and unemployment. Trans people deserve safety, care, and joy.

    • Disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill people face structural discrimination.

    • As diversity, equity, and inclusion becomes a scapegoat to make way for racism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, the result erases protections, codifies exclusion, and creates further structural discrimination.

      DONATE NOW

    • We are building a community-led movement of LGBTQ+ disabled writers to tell real stories, shift narratives, and create a world where all of us thrive.

    • We center folks who are trans, disabled, BIPOC, and the most targeted.

    • We welcome allies and accomplices!

      Bodies Beloved collaborates in a disability justice framework.

Meet the Curators of Bodies Beloved at the AWP Bookfair

Julián Jamaica Soto
Author, Spilling the Light
(Skinner House, 2024)
Executive Director, TRUUST (Transgender Religious professional Unitarian Universalists Together)

Anna Goodman Herrick
Author, A Speaker is A Wilderness
(Monkfish, 2024)
Writer, Performer, Filmmaker
(The Emily Dickinson Museum, Netflix,
Oprah Winfrey Network)

  • SPEAK WILD PRESENTS BODIES BELOVED
    CURATORS STATEMENT

    In this time of collective anxiety, uncertainty, erasure, and threats to vital medical care, we’re gathering with deep poetry and urgent conversation about who gets to make it and how we build the world we need.

    We are coming together as queer and trans disabled poets.

    Julián teaches that ableism supposes able bodied people don’t need support, and that all of us need all of us to make it. Anna’s poetry reminds us “We too are the universe.”

    Bodies Beloved is a place to remember that we belong to each other.

    Join Us at AWP: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Disabled Writers.

    Enjoy special events uplifting LGBTQ+ disabled writers (folks with physically disability, chronic illness, mental illness and psychological disability, neurodiversity)— and deep community conversations they inspire.

    • Curated poetry performances

    • Interactive community installations

    • Conversations that center disabled joy & resilience

    With your support, we’ll fund honorariums, accessibility, and space for these vital voices and representatives.

    Together, we create the world we need.

    “All of us need all of us to make it.”
    —Julián Jamaica Soto

    ”We too are the universe— expanding, in love, experiencing so much grief and joy.”
    —Anna Goodman Herrick 

Speak Wild: Bodies Beloved is a community-led initiative, fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Your contributions are tax deductible. Donate today.