KNEE BRACE PRESS

A place for stories about chronic illness, disability, mental health, and neurodivergence.

disability

  • An Asian person with black-rimmed, rectangular glasses and short black hair against a black background. They wear a blue vest and are smiling with their mouth closed.

    An interview with Quinton Li

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    We spoke with debut novelist Quinton Li about their novel Tell Me How It Ends, writing a series, and their queer and neurodiverse cast of characters.

  • A white person with brown hair, colorful glasses, and purple lipstick wearing a blue shirt.

    The Apocryphal Horseman

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    Finding someone with shared experiences is everything. In their new poem, The Apocryphal Horseman, Elise Scott writes about their relationship with their friend, April.

  • A Black person with white-rimmed glasses smiles widely with their eyes closed. They are holding their book, DEAR PHILOMENA by Mugabi Byenkya, and are surrounded by a circle of light.

    Hopelessly Romantic

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    Hopelessly Romantic is a disabled love poem set during the pandemic by award winning author Mugabi Byenkya.

  • The image is all in black, white, and gray and is divided into three sections. The first shows text reading, "An almost invisible cause. Static moving. Patterns of sounds, invisibly visual." There is a dark figure at the bottom. The second image shows the words, "HYPER ACOUSTIC" built out of blocks. The image is very busy with a lot of cut out shapes in the background. The last image is mostly text, but the words keep getting cut off. There is also an arrow pointing down.

    Layers of Hyper Acoustic Pain

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    Layers of Hyper Acoustic Pain by Luca M Damiani uses the artist’s writing, artworks, and photography based on his own disability, showing layered moments of invisible sensory disorder.

  • A Black person with white-rimmed glasses smiles widely with their eyes closed. They are holding their book, DEAR PHILOMENA by Mugabi Byenkya, and are surrounded by a circle of light.

    An interview with Mugabi Byenkya

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    Memoirist and magical realism author Mugabi Byenkya writes for themselves. Or, more accurately, the angsty, confused, Black, Ugandan-Rwandan-Nigerian, disabled, queer, polygender, and neurodivergent little human they used to be and still are.

  • Lessons in Belonging

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    “The average able-bodied stranger, though, only notices the ways my body is different from theirs.” In her essay, Lessons in Belonging, Julie Weissman-Steinbaugh details her experience growing up with cerebral palsy.

  • A Black person with white-rimmed glasses smiles widely with their eyes closed. They are holding their book, DEAR PHILOMENA by Mugabi Byenkya, and are surrounded by a circle of light.

    Seizure #774

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    If a loved one infringed on one of your most private moments for their own curiosity, how would you respond? That’s what author and poet Mugabi Byenkya writes about in their poem, Seizure #774, which takes place during a seizure.

  • Searching for Bunker Norms

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    It’s the end of the world. Then again, we Spoonies have always been able to adapt. While the non-disabled, richest one percent were hidden underground in bunkers during the catastrophe, a network spearheaded by a disabled woman had secretly gathered to protect the most disregarded of the population.

  • To Thrive in Darkness

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    “We were friendly with the dark.” So begins Jamieson Wolf’s To Thrive in Darkness, a short story where the characters live in a fictional labyrinth, but the narrator’s experiences with disability are strikingly similar to Wolf’s own experiences with multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.