Over the last year or two, I noticed something interesting. Many people who want to write for BSR note that they are disabled and/or neurodivergent when they email me for the first time. In my experience, this is not usually information that people volunteer up front when they are looking for work. In fact, many if not most workplaces are outright hostile to people with a variety of disabilities. Disabled folks like me often feel the need to downplay or conceal our needs on the job.
But at BSR, we have spent years building a platform that centers disability justice. People are noticing, and they feel comfortable introducing themselves as disabled, and being honest right from the start about how this shapes their world and their work.
This means a lot to us. The more I learn and experience about disability justice, the more I realize how challenging, elegant, audacious, and compelling these stories are -- and how they apply to all of us, without exception. This July, we're proud that disabled writers feel at home with BSR. We love to hear from disabled artists and readers.
This week, we're featuring a new-to-us writer who arrives all the way from Toronto. He shares about what it's really like to have a speech disability. Plus, film critic Stephen Silver offers his latest thoughts on the state of Philly movie theaters, and a UArts student nabs his first professional byline, bringing you inside his last days at UArts and wondering what's next.
Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief
