The Disability Reading Challenge is excited to continue its partnership with The Ruby, hosting the next installment of its monthly virtual book club series.
The Disability Reading Challenge is a year-long community reading initiative exploring disability representation, disability justice, and disabled storytelling across genres and lived experiences.
Through monthly reading prompts, featured books, and community discussions, the challenge invites participants to engage with disability narratives in whatever way feels accessible to them.
For our August discussion, we'll be reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.
This speculative novel offers a powerful vision of community, resilience, and futurity. Through its exploration of adaptation, belief, and collective responsibility, the book resonates deeply with disability justice questions about survival and world-building. This month's theme, Disabled Futures, invites imagination and speculation about how disabled people survive, adapt, and build worlds under changing social, political, and environmental conditions — without losing sight of present realities, and while centering disabled knowledge, creativity, and collective survival.
Whether you've finished the book, read only a few chapters, are reading another book related to August's theme of Disabled Futures, or simply want to listen and participate in the conversation, you're welcome. There is no expectation that you've finished the book—or even read it at all.
You're invited to participate in whatever way feels accessible to you. The discussion will take place virtually via Zoom.
This continued partnership with The Ruby expands the Disability Reading Challenge's existing community discussions, creating another welcoming space for disabled and nondisabled readers alike to explore literature, identity, and disability justice together.
Discussion Format This is a lightly facilitated, community-centered discussion designed to be welcoming to readers of all backgrounds and levels of familiarity with the book. The event will include:
Brief introductions and community agreements
A short overview of the month's Disability Reading Challenge theme
Guided discussion questions about the theme and book
Open conversation and participant reflections
Time for recommendations, resources, and closing thoughts
There is no expectation that participants have finished the book—or even read it at all. Whether you've read every page, only a few chapters, another book related to the monthly theme, or simply want to listen, you're welcome. The discussion is grounded in curiosity, accessibility, disability justice, and mutual respect.
About the Facilitator Geetanshi Sharma is a Bay Area–based writer, educator, advocate, and community organizer whose work centers disability justice and inclusive storytelling. She is the founder and facilitator of the Disability Reading Challenge, a global community reading initiative exploring disability representation and disabled storytelling, and is a current Creative in Residence at The Ruby. She has taught creative writing courses focused on decolonization and global perspectives at San Francisco State University and previously worked in accessibility in the tech industry. She writes growing in the margins on Substack and hosts Characters Like Us, a podcast featuring authors writing from the margins.