Radical Crip Imagination at Verb writers festival: Our stories, our way

Verb Wellington celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. It’s a unique writers festival in New Zealand as the only one to include a lit crawl. A lit crawl is like a pub crawl, moving from place to place, only with books and writers instead of drinking. It’s a popular Wellington institution.

The festival, running from the 9th to 12th of November, is unique for another reason. It’s the only one in Aotearoa that has intentionally welcomed Crip the Lit’s disabled writers every year since 2016, the year Crip the Lit was formed. Participation has grown beyond Lit Crawl. This year’s festival features two Crip the Lit-curated events, one ticketed and one donation-entry Lit Crawl event. Crip the Lit writers also participate in sessions not curated by Crip the Lit. This year at Verb, Crip the Lit has two quite different events.

Universe Hopping with Radical Crip Imagination invites the audience to “prepare to lift off and be whisked into a universe where all people don't merely survive, but flourish.” It's an exploration of world-building with a disability twist and help from the audience.

Immediately following, is the first session of Lit Crawl, which includes Letters to Disabled Friends. Writers will explore relationships with disabled characters, real and fictional. It won’t be entirely serious, we’ll be telling our favourites what we love or loathe about them, and
offering them some helpful advice.

As well as being a letters panellist, Crip the Lit writer Henrietta Bollinger will be in conversation about their acclaimed debut personal essay collection Articulations. While not curated by Crip the Lit, we strongly recommend this ticketed event.

Celebrated poet Tusiata Avia, featured in our publication Here we are, read us, is also appearing on Friday night at Meow for Big Fat Brown Bitch.

Featured writers mostly come from Wellington and thereabouts, because festivals don’t always have travel budget. Verb Wellington people are always supportive, finding accessible venues, and giving us the space and support to succeed. I personally love the Verb Festival because I feel welcomed as a writer and audience member.

Past successes include the lighthearted Great Debate. The moot was “There’s no such thing as a disabled writer – we are all just writers”. Of course the negative won! Festival audiences readily engage with the vibe of the occasion.

Crip the Lit writers are richly diverse. We’ve got to know each other, forming a supportive community, and genres grow more varied and interesting. As more writers participate we are sharing our work, and celebrating each other’s successes.

When we started Crip the Lit, Trish Harris and I wanted disabled writers to have our unique voices, perspectives and stories included and valued in mainstream writing, and to tell our stories our way.

We also want to challenge stereotyped and inaccurate portrayals of disabled characters in books, movies and on television. In 2016, disabled people in Wellington demonstrated outside the film screening of Me Before You, an adaptation of the book, in which the hero becomes disabled, seeking assisted death because disability is a fate worse than death, despite being very rich, and the love of a good woman.

It’s essential that disability is represented and celebrated as part of the glorious variety of humanity in all genres of literature, and in film, television and video. There is no one right way to represent us, authenticity is the key. Disabled writers bring refreshingly different
world views and frames of reference.

As well as creating our own narratives, and promoting honest representation, disabled writers need a platform and community, whatever genre we’re writing in. Participating in the arts as a practitioner or in the audience nourishes the spirit and widens the world.

To explore the disability experience for women writers in the 120th year of women’s suffrage, Crip the Lit published Here we are, Read us. Women, disability and writing, a small, free, multi-format book profiling eight diverse disabled women writers. It creatively explores the
sometimes complicated and often neglected relationship between writing and disability. We still have a few copies, mostly large print, other formats can be freely downloaded here. 

Crip the Lit is building a nationwide community of writers who identify as disabled and/or Deaf. We encourage, acknowledge, develop and celebrate disabled voices. Crip the Lit events are at accessible St Peter's, where some mobility parking is available if booked in advance. Please email Toni at office@stpetersonwillis.org.nz to enquire. Sign language interpretation is available for the Radical Crip Imagination event.

All Verb Festival tickets are $19 concession and $23 general admission, with season passes also available. For the festival Lit Crawl, entry is by koha. You can purchase $10 access tickets online for Universe Hopping and Articulations. Door sales are also available.

Wellington Access Radio have been long-time supporters of Crip the Lit, recording and broadcasting our sessions which will be made available some time after the festival.

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