Crip News v.226

A disability journalism digest, new works, calls, and events.

NEWS

Disability Journalism Digest

• Earlier this year, Priti Salian from Reframing Disability launched a Global Directory of Disabled News Media Professionals “to connect editors, news organisations, and media projects with disabled professionals around the world for paid work, collaborations, and commissions.”

  

  Dancer Samantha Figgins. Photo by Shuran Huang for HuffPost.

• Last month, Rajul Punjabi-Johnson, director of HuffPo Voices, introduced a new series called “Voices of Disabled People.”

• The Disabled Journalists Association has been publishing several special featured projects and a regular series by John Loeppky called “Disability Stories You May Have Missed.”

• The survey data from readers of Peter Torres Fremlin’s Disability Debrief offer a portrait of disability-focused newsletter subscribers, including a marked increase in those identifying as disabled.

• The Global Disability News Network published an article about how PBS KIDs approaches inclusion and accessibility through their educational games, as well as how they advance inclusive characters through disability representation, Indigenous storytelling, and gender equity.

  

  Journalist Emily Ann Riedel from Norway’s TV Bra. Photo by TV Bra.

• The Reuters Institute’s Journalist Fellow William Kremer published “Creating news for (and with) people with learning disabilities” based on research about how public service media can be more inclusive, relevant, and useful.

New Works

• The 18th Annual ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York kicks off this Thursday, April 23, and runs through April 30. This year’s program features virtual and in-person screenings, special events, and an Industry Summit.

• Clinical herbalist, rootworker, diviner, and poet Cyrée Jarelle Johnson published a new essay asking: “Does Disabled COVID Shame Matter?” The arrival of COVID, he writes, “brought a new kind of shame, and even many people in the disabled community weren’t ready to face it.”

  

• The Boston Globe’s Cate McQuaid recently profiled disabled artist, activist, and educator Emily Sara, who is “on a leading edge of artists calling disability a ‘powerful generative force.’”

• Oracle is a disability-centered MFA Thesis Exhibition by Carly “Car” Riegger, up at Commonwealth Gallery (Madison, WI) through April 23.

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CALLS

• The Disability Inclusion Fund has launched a Request for Proposals for a new round of Collaborative Grants to support U.S.-based groups run by and for people with disabilities building a more liberatory world free from ableism. Applications are due by May 20.

• Women’s eNews, The Loreen Arbus Foundation, EIN SOF Communications, and Lights! Camera! Access! have launched the Accessibility is Fundamental Paid Fellowship for 2 aspiring journalists who identify as female – one over 50 years old; one under 50 years old. Apply by May 10.

  

• The Music Gallery, Phoenix the Fire, and VibraFusionLab invite hearing artists based in Ontario to apply for a multi-day residency program in September 2026 to collaborate with Deaf-artists. Apply by April 29.

• The American Association of People with Disabilities is hiring for multiple positions.

• Open Style Lab is initiating a disability-led virtual research residency at the intersection of AI, fashion, and personal style. Applications are open for multiple positions until May 1st.

• The Rauschenberg Medical Emergency Grants program provides one-time grants of up to $5,000 for recent unexpected medical, dental, and mental health emergencies to artists in the visual arts, film/video/electronic/digital arts, and choreography. Apply by May 12.

• Project LETS is seeking Mad, Disabled, psychiatric survivor-artists who would like to partner in their Mad Mail monthly art-based mail club.

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EVENTS

• Artists at Work: Bernd Oppl and Mara Mills
  TODAY, April 21, 6:30 - 7:30pm ET, in-person at International Studio & Curatorial Program (Brooklyn, NY)
  ISCP artist-in-residence Bernd Oppl will be joined by scholar Mara Mills. Oppl will speak about his engagement with apparatuses, technologies, and spaces that shape human perception. He will then speak to Mills about how visual impairment informs both the making and experiencing of art. Together, they will discuss disability authorship and disability as a framework in relation to Crip Authorship: Disability as Method (2023), co-edited by Mills. A Q&A with the audience will follow.

• Sick In Quarters is holding an online fundraiser, PENUMBRA, in benefit of thái Lu on April 25.

• Eli Clare + Ellen Samuels Book Chat
  Thursday, April 23, 4 - 5:30pm PT, online

  What happens when you put Eli Clare and Ellen Samuels, two disabled oracles, in conversation? Actual magic. This spring, Eli and Ellen are both releasing new books, and they’re sharing them with the DCC community! Eli’s new book, Unfurl: Survival, Sorrows, and Dreaming, is a queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams. Ellen’s new poetry collection, Your Body Should Be a Part of the World, is a meditation on chronic illness, survival, and community that moves between the intimate space of the sickroom and the messy persistence of nature. We can’t wait to explore the overlap in their work, the pockets between, and the joy of creative relationships. This event is made possible by Alice Wong and the Disability Visibility Project.

• Echoes of the City: Disability Arts Exchange (in-person registration, LA), a workshop series curated by Vanessa Hernández Cruz in partnership with The Music Center in Los Angeles, CA & the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective, offers a space for Disabled artists, creators and dreamers of all experience levels to connect, imagine and create from Spring 2026-Fall 2027. Next event: Friday, April 24 at 1pm.

  

• Access Intelligence: Disability & AI Virtual Symposium
  Wednesday, April 22, 10am - 12pm PT, on Zoom
  From the Leonardo CripTech Incubator. Access Intelligence brings together artists, researchers, and technologists working at the intersection of disability and AI. Together, they will examine what disabled people already know as theorists and builders of intelligence, and to imagine what building with that knowledge could look like. Featuring M Eilo, Joshua Miele, Louise Hickman, Lindsey Felt, and Claudia Alick.