READING & LISTENING LIST


Essays, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry, podcasts, and zines relating to the body, illness, pain, disability, trauma, and more.

Memoir

The Undying by Anne Boyer

The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

The Tiger and The Cage by Emma Bolden

Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

The Shapeless Unease by Samantha Harvey

I Choose Elena by Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin

Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth

Happening by Annie Ernaux

The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso

Inferno by Catherine Cho

Sick by Porochista Khakpour

Your Voice In My Head by Emma Forrest

Notes to Self by Emilie Pine

Ask Me About My Uterus by Abby Norman

Hunger by Roxane Gay

Hysteria by Katerina Bryant

Places I’ve Taken My Body: Essays by Molly McCully Brown

Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick

Codependence by Amy Long

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones

Non Fiction/essay

Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Pain Woman Takes Your Keys by Sonya Huber

Blackfishing the IUD by Caren Beilin

Crippled by Frances Ryan

Invisible by Michele Lent Hirsch

Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton & Artie Vierkant

Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery

Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer

Health Justice Now by Timothy Faust

Exposure by Olivia Sudjic

Disability Aesthetics by Tobin Anthony Siebers

Bodyminds reimagined by Sami Schalk

What Her Body Thought by Susan Griffin

The Rejected Body by Susan Wendell

When The Sick Rule The World by Dodie Bellamy

The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry

Brilliant Imperfection by Eli Clare

Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva

Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag

Life in the sick-room by Harriet Martineau

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Conditioner by Liz Barr

Body Work by Melissa Febos

How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell

My Body Keeps Your Secrets by Lucia Osborne-Crowley

The Way We Survive by Catriona Morton

Who Wants Normal? Life Lessons from Disabled Women by Frances Ryan 

Anthologies

Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled, & Neurodivergent Poets, edited by Rachael Boast

Criptiques edited by Caitlin Wood

A Queer Anthology of Sickness published by Pilot Press

Cusp: Feminist Writing on Bodies, Myth & Magic published by Ache magazine

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century edited by Alice Wong

On Bodies published by 3 of Cups Press

On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf and Audre Lorde (new, collaborative edition featuring various writers)




Fiction

Assembly by Natasha Brown

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

Want by Lynn Steger Strong

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin

Maps of our Spectacular Bodies by Maddy Mortimer

Lungfish by Meghan Gilliss

All’s Well by Mona Awad

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottesa Moshfegh

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Hotel World by Ali Smith

Severance by Ling Ma

Nervous Systems by Lina Meruane

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Poetry

Don’t Let it Kill You by Theo LeGro

The Amputee’s Guide to Sex by Jillian Weise

Trust Fall by William Gee

Who’s Your Daddy by Arisa White

The Relativity of Living Well by Ashna Ali

Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz

Gravitas by Amy Berkowitz

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer

Rheuma by William Gee

In the Sick Hour by Jane Hartshorn & Kaiya Waerea

Curses, Curses by Kirstie Millar & Alice Blackstock

Metamorphosis by Charlotte Lunn

Garments Against Women by Anne Boyer

Virgins by Jesse Darling

Descriptions by Alec Finlay 

Shield by Jamie Hale 

Body Count by Kyla Jamieson

Hyperlove by Naomi Morris

Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

Zines & Publications

Blued, published by Silken Reference

Counter Signals 4, published by Other Forms

Manifesto: Profitit for Survival by Be Oakley, published by GenderFail

Monthly Mail-out, published by Sticky Fingers Publishing

Spring 2022 Instalment of Thick Press’ ongoing INQUIRY INTO CARE

Trans Masc Studies Volumes 1-3

Transgender Health in the UK: A Primer by o.s. warren

Listens

No End in Sight - a podcast about life with chronic illness by Brianne Benness 

POWER NOT PITY - a podcast by Bri M.

Down to the Struts - a podcast about disability and design by Qudsiya Naqui

Disability Visibility - a podcast by Alice Wong

Death Panel - a podcast about the political economy of health by Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, and Phil Rocco