Spotlight Women Authors: Celebrating Women’s History Month with Alyssa Graybeal
By Lizzy Young
Women’s History Month is coming to a close, so, to round out our celebration of our women authors on the blog, we are featuring Alyssa Graybeal!
Alyssa Graybeal is a queer writer and cartoonist whose work focuses on the emotional landscape of living with chronic illness and disability, in particular the connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Floppy: Tales of a Genetic Freak of Nature at the End of the World is her first memoir and won the 2020 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Book Award. She has a BA from McGill University and an MLIS from Dalhousie University, and she works as an editor and writing coach. You can find her online at www.alyssagraybeal.com. She lives in Astoria, Oregon.
Lizzy Young: Who are some women authors that inspire you?
Alyssa Graybeal: All-time faves: Ariel Gore, Michelle Tea, Lynda Barry, Akwaeke Emezi (even though they are nonbinary)
Also narrative nonfiction by Carmen Maria Machado, Alice Wong, Esmé Weijung Wang, Chelsey Clammer.
In comics, I’m inspired by Keiler Roberts, Allie Brosh, Nicole J. Georges, Tillie Walden, Rebecca Fish Ewan
LY: How do you hope your work adds to the rich history of books written by women?
AG: I hope Floppy adds to the literature by showing an example of the weird, fascinating, and inspired lives that women with chronic illness often create for themselves.
Many chronic illness memoirs focus on shortcomings of the medical system, and while these books are necessary and important, I crave more conversation around the profound creativity that disabled people develop. I want to read all the books about how we harness that creative capacity to build meaningful lives around our bodies’ unique needs while also challenging the ableist power structures that be.
I want us always to be asking, what if my body is not the problem?
LY: Who are some of your favorite female characters in literature, and why?
AG: Too many to count!
Recently, I’ve been loving the whole queer family energy in Nina Packebush’s YA series, Girls Like Me.
I just reread The Hero and Crown by Robin McKinley, which I really liked as a child. The main character, Aerin Firehair, is wonderfully irascible in the face of mistreatment, and we don’t always get to see women express such righteous anger.
And I’ve been digging into Golden Age mysteries for winter comfort reading, and in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, the character of Harriet Vane is a real feminist for her time. I mean, she rejects a rich man’s marriage proposals several times until she’s sure he’s not going to mess with her successful writing career. I admire that for sure.
Alyssa Graybeal is adding to the conversation with her memoir, Floppy: Tales of a Genetic Freak at the End of the World, which is forthcoming from Red Hen Press this spring!
One of the first books to explore the emotional landscape of living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome from a patient’s perspective; a playful story of falling down, getting back up again, and realizing you should have gone to the hospital sooner.
When ten-year-old Alyssa is diagnosed with the rare genetic connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, she vows not to let it stop her. Unfortunately, her efforts to avoid being “too sensitive” lead her to neglect not only her health but other aspects of her life as well. Twenty years later, she’s finally forced to confront the reality of her condition head on. When she finds herself tangled in an unwieldy combination of chronic pain, a library job for which she is particularly ill-suited, and her wife’s mystifying health problems, her body starts to unravel in ways she can no longer ignore. If pushing through is not the answer, what does homecoming to her floppy body even look like?
Preorder it today at this link!
We are so grateful Alyssa Grabybeal is part of the Red Hen family! We really enjoyed hearing from her and some of our incredible women authors this month and hope you did too!
