07/20/2026 Disability Awareness for July by Kerry E. B. Black

Candace Nola
4 hours ago
2 min read

Kerry E.B. Black returns with some great books highlighting Disabilities within Fiction for Disability Awareness.

Disability Awareness in July

Written by Kerry E.B. Black

July is Disability Awareness Month. According to the 2024 census, 1 in 7 people in the United States is disabled in some way. Disability can be congenital or it can develop over time or as a result of an accident. With these things in mind, we may and should encounter disabilities in our reading.

Stephen King has presented disabled characters in many of his works. The hero of Cycle of the Werewolf uses an unironically-named wheelchair. The Stand presents a couple of characters working through the challenges of their disabilities. There’s an amputee in Duma Key (I didn’t mean to make that rhyme, but to continue…), and Holly Gibney, a charming young woman with autism, emerged from Mr. Mercedes as not only a supporting hero, but earned a detective agency and books of her own. There are more in Mr. King’s vast cast of characters, but these spring to my mind.

Some other written works that feature disabled characters include Kylie Lee Baker’s The Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zhang, depicting OCD, All’s Well by Mona Awad, portraying chronic pain, and Marlena Enriquez’s Our Share of Night and its amputee main character.

Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep depicts autism, mobility issues, deafness, and anxiety, Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone features a main character with endometriosis. Nicky Gonzalez’s Mayra depicts anxiety disorder. In Rotten Tommy by David Sodergren, autism factors into the narrative.

In the YA Take All of Us, disabled teens are abandoned during a zombie apocalypse, with thoughtful depictions of epilepsy in this tale of acceptance. It could be argued that Piggy in William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, with his asthma and severe myopia, lived with disabilities.

I’ve explored the effect of disability on a sibling relationship in my novella, Wolves at Bay. The lead character, Ward, resents his little disabled little sister so much that he cuts ties with his family when he becomes an adult. As fate had it, though, he needed her aid as an herbalist when his infant son grew tremendously ill. My story finds Ward grow to appreciate and attempt to defend his sister when her aid results in a witchcraft allegation.

Certainly, there are many, many more portrayals of disability in the works we’ve read and written. What are some of your favorites? (I’m always looking to expand my T.B.R.!)

More about Kerry E.B. Black

Kerry E.B. Black writes from an over-stuffed little house situated along a fog-enshrouded river in the land where Romero's Dead roamed. Her children think she's dull, and their dogs agree, but the family cats, Poe and Hemingway, feel differently. The felines find a kinship with their nocturnal buddy and encourage Kerry to write.