Information about Contributors

Olivia Caldeira received her PhD from Memorial University of Newfoundland where she wrote a dissertation on young adults with intellectual disabilities. She is currently a community-based mental health specialist and is pursuing a Master's of Social Work degree at The Ohio State University. She offers workshops on safe sexual practices to adults with intellectual disabilities.Traci Cox is a PhD candidate in English/Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Prose from George Mason University and a BA with Honors and Distinction in English and Anthropology from James Madison University. She is a J. W. Fulbright Fellow (Slovak Republic, 2009–10) and has taught undergraduate English, folklore, and Honors College courses for 12 years. Her work has appeared in The Masters Review, So to Speak, Newfound, and Madison Magazine, and she has a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2014.Nora Ellen Groce holds the Leonard Cheshire Chair and is director of the International Centre for Disability Research at University College London (UCL). She and her team work in one of the few research centers that specializes in applied research on people with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries, undertaking research on disability and poverty, malnutrition and infectious diseases, and education and economic development. Groce received her PhD in Anthropology from Brown University and served as a research fellow at Harvard before joining the Yale School of Public Health in 1990, where she helped establish and build the Global Health program. She is best known for her work in global health and international development with vulnerable populations, particularly people with disabilities. She is widely published and regularly works with United Nation agencies, national governments, scientific research councils, and advocacy groups.Andrea Kitta is a folklorist and Professor at East Carolina University (ECU), where she specializes in folklore and medicine, legends, conspiracy theories, belief, and the supernatural. She received a Teacher/Scholar award from ECU (2015–16) and the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award (2018–19). Her monograph Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor, and Risk Perception (2012) won the Brian McConnell Book Award. The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore (2019) won the Chicago Folklore Prize and Brian McConnell Book Award. She is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society and serves on several committees dedicated to the promotion of folklore as an academic discipline.Phyllis M. May-Machunda is an independent folklorist/ethnomusicologist and Professor Emerita of American Multicultural Studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM). She earned her MA and PhD from Indiana University Bloomington in Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Prior to teaching and serving as founding chair of her department at MSUM, Phyllis was a contract researcher for the Program in Black American Culture and then a folklore specialist/curator in Folklife Programs at the Smithsonian Institution. Her research interests include African American traditional cultures and music (with interest in women's, children's, and family traditions), performance, antiracism, social justice, disability studies, and critical multicultural education. Her scholarship includes articles in journals and books, and curation of multicultural exhibitions, including co-curating the American Folklore Society's Notable Folklorists of Color on the contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People(s) of Color (BIPOC) ancestors to folklore studies (2019, 2022).Teresa Milbrodt's critical work includes the monograph Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality (2022) as well as scholarly publications in creative writing and disability studies. Her creative work includes the novel The Patron Saint of Unattractive People (2013), flash fiction collection Larissa Takes Flight: Stories (2014), and three short story collections: Instances of Head-Switching (2020), Bearded Women: Stories (2011), and Work Opportunities (2018). Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary magazines, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Milbrodt is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.Ann Millett-Gallant is an art historian, disability studies scholar, visual artist, and the author of The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art ([2010] 2023). She is Senior Lecturer for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she designs and teaches interdisciplinary online courses in art history; visual culture; disability studies; and women's, gender, and sexuality studies.Gwendolyn Paradice is Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy at Murray State University, where they direct the Creative Writing program. They are disabled, queer, and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Their fiction and nonfiction, which tend toward the speculative, explore form and identity. They are the author of the Hudson Prize-winning short story collection More Enduring for Having Been Broken (2021) as well as the co-written chapbook Carnival Bound (or, please unwrap me) (2020; with Kara Dorris).Anand Prahlad is a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Missouri, where he served as co-director of the Folklore Studies program and director of the Creative Writing program. He taught courses in folklore, creative writing, Black studies, film studies, music, and disability studies. His scholarly works include Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music (2001), African-American Proverbs in Context (1996), articles in numerous journals, and four edited volumes of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore (1996). His creative works include the collection of poems As Good as Mango (2012), and a disability memoir The Secret Life of a Black Aspie (2017). Most of his recent work has focused on disability, including a third collection of poems Dreaming of Endangered Species (2023) and writings on disability art and relationships between disability and geography. He is currently an affiliate faculty at the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurological Disorders in Columbia, Missouri.Amy Shuman is Professor Emerita at The Ohio State University where she taught folklore in the Department of English and directed the Disability Studies program. As president of the Fellows of the American Folklore Society, she coordinated the webinar that resulted in this volume. She has a son with intellectual disabilities who helps her with plain language.Allison Stanich is recently graduated from George Mason University (GMU) with an MA in English with a concentration in Folklore and a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies. They worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the GMU Writing Center, where they conducted research about ways the center can support disabled and/or neurodivergent writers and consultants. As a neurodivergent person who is autistic and has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, they plan to continue studying neurodivergent folklore and researching ways to support disabled and/or neurodivergent individuals in writing center settings and beyond.

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