Crip News v.210
Alice Wong, new works, other news, calls, and events.
Alice, Our Ancestor
The passing of disabled activist, writer, editor, and community organizer Alice Wong has sent waves of grief through our networks. She joined the ancestors on Friday, November 14th at UCSF Hospital at the age of 51.
“Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time.” This is the first line of the message Alice wrote to announce her death. It knocked the air out of me. I tried writing a tribute. No words felt good enough.
Then friends started calling and texting. We cried, recalling the first times we encountered Alice’s words and the last times we spoke with her. I hung up the phone knowing Alice had cast a spell for crip love to rush into the space of loss.
Alice’s family highlighted this magic in a statement published a few days after her passing:
As we mourn the incomprehensible loss of Alice, we share the words she gifted us with from her memoir, Year of the Tiger. “The real gift any person can give is a web of connective tissue. If we love fiercely, our ancestors live among and speak to us through these incandescent filaments glowing from the warmth of memories.”
I found Alice during Twitter’s heyday, when all crip news seemed to pass through @SFdirewolf. She grew and protected a root system of disabled media that led directly to projects like this newsletter.
Alice was among the first subscribers to Crip News in October 2021. She replied to issue #4 with questions about citation and disability identity that led to a long correspondence. I think about it often when I’m writing these issues. I learned a few days ago that she started sending gifts to high schoolers studying disability justice after reading about their bad-ass teacher in Crip News.
Alice was prolific in ways we probably won’t fully understand. Her immensely successful career is evidence of her process: the love, joy, and possibility she cultivated in relationships. In this way, keeping her with us is a matter of noticing ourselves as the glowing filaments of all she’s taught us.
Rest in power, Alice Wong.
You can donate to support the legacy of Alice’s work. A community celebration of her life will take place in the spring.
NEWS
New Works
New Disabled South has released the first episode in a docuseries called “Dual: The True Cost of Care” about what it’s like to be dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid in the US South.
BALLOONS!!! by Shucheng Cao. Gabrielle de la Puente of The White Pube has curated “Restaging Disability” for University of the Arts London, a collection of works that “demonstrate new ways of performing disability, of using a disabled script, creating its costume, building its stage.”
Anna RG’s Sick (Music) Center is an “experimental research, development, and community space exploring sick/disabled listening and music” transforming Recess’s Session space (Brooklyn) through Jan. 10, 2026.
A new national survey of 2,618 artists conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and funded by the Mellon Foundation found that about 20% of artists identified as disabled and 33% said they were managing a chronic condition. The top 2 reasons artists did not engage in any paid work were retirement (28% of non-working artists) and health issues (23%).
In an essay for Time Magazine, Chella Man writes about skydiving, something he could only do after his cochlear implant failed.
The New York Disability Rights Archive is on view at Positive Exposure Gallery (NYC) through Dec. 31.
In Other News…
National Public Radio’s Meg Anderson recently reported on the “neurocognitive disorder team” within in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s office that aims to offer legal support to people with cognitive disabilities.
Several disabled artists are among the newest recipients of the Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists program, including Kayla Hamilton and India Harville.
Disability Arts Online has received a £249,607 grant from the UK’s National Lottery Heritage Fund to support “Cripping Culture: A Journey into Disability Arts Heritage,” which aims to “save the stories of the Disability Arts movement from being lost and share them through a digital archive, interactive timeline and podcast series.”
The Mellon Foundation has awarded San Francisco State University $2 million to “expand and revitalize disability-centered academic offerings and student activities,” including 2 new tenure-track faculty positions in disability studies. The Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, founded at the University in 1996, is now located at The Arc San Francisco.
CALLS
Advocate Sara Minkara seeks respondents to a short survey about “how the current U.S. administration’s policies and rhetoric have impacted the global disability community and how the global disability community perceives the U.S. today.”
UK-based organizations John Hansard Gallery and Midlands Arts Centre each seek to appoint a disabled curator as part of Disability Arts In Shropshire’s Future Curators Programme. Apply by Dec. 1.
Disability Arts Online is hiring a Heritage Project Coordinator for the Cripping Culture: a Journey into Disability Arts Heritage project. Apply by Dec. 8.
The Performance and Disability Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research is seeking contributions for a 4-day program called “What Theatre Does: Doing Performance and Disability” taking place in Melbourne, Australia and online in July 2026. Submit by Dec. 8.
EVENTS
Complicated Pride: Disability, Neurodivergence, and Ambivalence
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 7 - 8:30am ET, on Zoom
The Wellcome Anti-ableist Research Culture project at the University of Sheffield presents a series of monthly webinars and workshops on the theme of Dreaming up a Disability Inclusive Workplace through March 2026. Topics were chosen by surveying members of the National Association of Disabled Staff Networks and we’ve curated workshops and talks from disabled professionals from a variety of backgrounds and industries. This session will explore the complexities of disability pride, and give participants some space to rest, breathe and explore what pride means to them. Led by disabled practitioners Amelia Lander-Cavallo and tobi adebajo, we will begin with a discussion of what pride is and what care means to us as disabled people. You will then be led through some light exercises and provocations where you can take some time to reflect or just rest.Crip Reading Club and Crip Arts Gathering
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2 - 3:30pm ET / Saturday, Nov. 29, 2:30 - 4:30pm ET, on Zoom
Rest Fest’s reading club will discuss Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne. The Crip Arts Gatherings are relaxed, virtual events. It will be a moment to take a breath, make art, and reconnect or meet for the first time fellow Disabled, Deaf, chronically ill, Neurodivergent, mentally ill, and/or mad folks with warmth and restful energy.