A DISTURBANCE … THAT REFLECTS A DYSFUNCTION
Nisha Patel is an award-winning queer and disabled artist. She was the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate, and the 2019 Canadian Individual Slam Champion. She currently works as the 2021 Regional Writer in Residence. She is a recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award and the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence. Her debut collection COCONUT is available now at Glass Bookshop. You can find her at nishapatel.ca.
Nisha Patel was one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook Not a Disorder.
In Not a Disorder, the author interprets the clinical language of disability into poetics based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Contrasting her own identifying narrative with that of the medical text, the chapbook humanizes disability labels and takes us through the author’s journey of learning she is disabled.
