Women & Children First is thrilled to partner with Access Living to present a virtual panel with Alice Wong, Akemi Nishida, Ashley Volion, and Moya Bailey to celebrate the release of Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire. 

Please note: This is a free virtual event, but registration is required to receive the Zoom Webinar link.

REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT HERE! 

Accessibility: This event will be hosted on Zoom Webinar. ASL interpretation and CART will be provided. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.

The much-anticipated follow up to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility: another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms.

What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm.

But don’t worry: there’s still sex to consider—and the numerous ways sexual liberation intersects with disability justice. Plunge between these pages and you’ll also find disabled sexual discovery, disabled love stories, and disabled joy. These twenty-five stunning original pieces—plus other modern classics on the subject, all carefully curated by acclaimed activist Alice Wong—include essays, photo essays, poetry, drama, and erotica: a full spectrum of the dreams, fantasies, and deeply personal realities of a wide range of beautiful bodies and minds. Disability Intimacy will free your thinking, invigorate your spirit, and delight your desires.

Alice Wong is a disabled activist, media maker, and research consultant based in San Francisco, California. She is the author of a bestselling memoir, Year of the Tiger; the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project—an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture; and the editor of the anthology Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century and Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today (Adapted for Young Adults). Alice is also the host and coproducer of the Disability Visibility podcast and copartner in a number of collaborations such as #CripTheVote and Access Is Love. From 2013 to 2015, Alice served as a member of the National Council on Disability, an appointment by President Barack Obama.

Akemi Nishida uses research, education, and activism to investigate how ableism and sanism are
exercised in relation to racism, cis-heteropatriarchy, and other forms of social injustices. She also
uses such methods to contribute to disability justice activism. She is the author of Just Care: Messy
Entanglements of Disability, Dependency, and Desire (Temple University Press, 2022) in which she
examines public healthcare programs as well as grassroots interdependent care collectives and
bed-space activism. She teaches at University of Illinois Chicago, while also advocates for disability
justice locally and nationally.

Ashley Volion is a native of Louisiana and currently resides in New Orleans. Ashley has a Ph.D. in
Disability Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Bachelors and a Masters in
Sociology from the University of New Orleans. Ashley’s research interests are: disability and
access intimacy as well as home and community-based services. She also has poetry published
in the Queer Disability Anthology. Currently, Ashley is employed as a Policy Analyst at Disability
Rights LA, and a lecturer in Sociology at Tulane University. She is committed to ensuring that
people with disabilities are fully integrated members of society.

Moya Bailey is an Associate Professor at Northwestern University and is the founder of the Digital
Apothecary and co-founder of the Black Feminist Health Science Studies Collective. Her work focuses on
marginalized groups’ use of digital media to promote social justice, and she is interested in how race,
gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine. She is the digital alchemist for the Octavia
E. Butler Legacy Network and the Board President of Allied Media Projects, a Detroit-based movement
media organization that supports an ever-growing network of activists and organizers. She is a co-author
of #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (MIT Press, 2020) and is the author of
Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance (New York University Press, 2021).

Access Living is a leading force in the disability community. We challenge stereotypes, protect civil rights, and champion social reforms. We are located in Chicago and have a long history of doing what it takes to make sure people with disabilities can live the lives they choose. Access Living is the Center for Independent Living (CIL) that serves the City of Chicago. That means we are a local, disability consumer‑controlled, cross‑disability, nonresidential, private nonprofit. As a CIL, we believe in dignity, community integration, civil rights, and equal access for all people with disabilities. We envision a world free from barriers and discrimination – where disability is a respected and natural part of the human experience and people with disabilities are included and valued. We ignite disability power and pride, provide critical services, and break down systemic barriers to create a stronger, more inclusive society.

This book event is supported by the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities; Shirley Ryan Abilities Lab; and the Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL), a teaching lab housed under the department of art therapy and counseling at SAIC. This program received generous funding from Healing IL: funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services in partnership with the Field Foundation. This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

The contents of this event were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90RTCP0005). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this event do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.”

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Tags: Akemi Nishida, Alice Wong, Ashley Volion, Chicago, Edgewater, Moya Bailey, Virtual: Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love Care and Desire Panel with Alice Wong, Women & Children First Bookstore