Deaf and Disabled Writer Commissions

Oli is a writer based in London. Their passion for writing stems from growing up with a severe stutter and experiencing how language can fail us. Currently, Oli is developing their debut audio play as a recipient of Audible Theatre’s Emerging Playwrights Fund. They also teach poetry workshops, most recently with The Learning Cooperative. In 2024, Oli won the Verve Poetry Festival Competition.

Ollie said; “I am so honoured to have been selected by Spread The Word for this writer’s commission. I am grateful that they took a chance to support this writing proposal, given that neither I nor them really know how the project is going to end up. That level of trust and confidence is deeply heartening. I will spend the winter writing and experimenting with reflective, non-fiction essays, each one anchored by my local community garden in South East London. Non-fiction essays are an expansion of my current writing practice, but it is one I’ve been keen to move towards and test out. In poetry, I can often hide meaning between layers; in plays, I can build entirely new worlds. However, I’ve always deeply admired writers who seamlessly blend the personal, the philosophical, the poetic in their essays. It’s a challenge but one I am so excited to embrace, particularly with the one-on-one support and guidance of a writing mentor, and the help of Spread The Word throughout it all.”

Jamila Prowse is an artist and writer, propelled by curiosity and a desire to understand herself. Informed by her lived experience of disability and mixed race ancestry, her work is research driven and indebted to Black feminist and crip scholars. She is an active participant in a rich and growing contemporary disabled artistic community and has been ongoingly researching, programming and creating around cripping the art world since 2018. Her writing has appeared in Frieze, Art Monthly and elsewhere.

Jamila said; “I’m extremely grateful and excited to be selected for the Spread the Word Deaf and Disabled Writers Commission. The opportunity comes at a time when I’ve had to rethink my practice in relation to an exacerbation in my disability and being signed off on long-term sick leave. It also marks the first time I’ve had dedicated professional development support around my writing. Doing so with the support and collaboration of disabled writers who inherently understand the unique barriers of living and working in an ableist world, means I feel uniquely understood and encouraged to find my way back to the process of writing, a form I’ve always returned to in order to better understand myself and my place in the world.”

Ellie is a poet, originally from Leeds, who started performing in Leicester and now lives in Greenwich. Ellie was a member of the Roundhouse collective in 2023/2024 and is now part of the Spread the Word Young Writers Collective. She writes about disability and ableism, chronic illness and the loneliness epidemic.

Ellie said; “I’ve never done anything like this before so I’m excited, nervous and proud. It’s great to be working somewhere where my disability is recognised and celebrated as part of what makes me me. I’m so excited to see where this takes me next as a writer.”

Ayesha Chouglay is a writer and multimedia artist with a passion for storytelling. Her work often focuses on illness and disability, bringing emotion to overly clinical subjects, and opening up safe spaces for conversation. She is interested in the ways that disability changes our perception of the world, and works with perceived imperfections to create new ways of looking. She has shown her poetry and artwork in many spaces, including within a Poetry Jukebox at Belfast International Arts Festival, at Mr W et al, a celebratory event exploring art and disability in Hackney Wick, and in Deaf Experience, an online short film screening of work by deaf and hard-of hearing creators, organised by The Film Bunch. She enjoys working with other creative people, and has recently been working as the producer for the Creative Voices, Activist Voices Exhibition for Fun Palaces. Her background is in Fine Art, and she feels that this encourages new perspectives within her writing.

Joe Rizzo Naudi is a London-based writer and facilitator. In 2022 he was awarded a London Writers Award by Spread the Word and received an Arts Council England grant to develop literature and performance projects exploring cane use. His writing, film and theatre work has been performed or exhibited at the Wellcome Collection, the BFI Southbank, Brixton House, Vault Festival, Rich Mix and the ICA. He is an AHRC-funded PhD student at Royal Holloway, researching fiction, artwork description and the creative potential of blindness. He has an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths.