Online Intimacies and Artful Life in Turtle Disco Zoomshells

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a digital intervention created in COVID-19 times, Turtle Disco Zoomshells. Turtle Disco is a disability community arts organization, which I co-lead with my wife, poet and dancer Stephanie Heit. In this weekly mutual aid and support group with fellow disabled and disability-adjacent people starting in March 2020, we check in, support each other, and reflect together on creativity in digital times via Zoom. We also offer a Zoom-based creative writing class on disability and science fiction, led by me as part of an offering where disabled writers offer free workshops to other people with disabilities. In this chapter I include my participants’ creative writing from these sessions to illuminate ways to think about intimacy, distance, and crip magic. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, xtine burrough and Judy Walgren.