2024 Authors with Disability Leadership Booklist

We created this list to promote leadership narratives written by authors with disabilities. This list is meant to be a resource, not an official endorsement. The books are not ranked or listed in any particular order.

1. Disarm Your Limits: The flight formula to lift you to success and propel you to the next horizon by Jessica Cox
2. The White Album by Joan Didion
3. Chef Interrupted by Trevis Gleason 
4. Fall Down, Laughing: How Squiggy caught multiple sclerosis and didn’t tell nobody by David Lander
5. Speedbumps: Flooring it through Hollywood by Teri Garr
6. And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life by Nicola Griffith
7. To Know As We Are Known: Education as Spiritual Journey by Parker Palmer
8. The World I Live In by Helen Keller
9. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot  by John Callahan
10. Haben: The Deafblind Woman who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma
11. Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare
12. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
13. House of Prayer No. 2 by Mark Richard
14. Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People edited by Alice Wong
15. Marbles: Mania, Depression Michelangelo, and Me by Ellen Forney
16. Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse by Shane Burcaw
17. I Am Schizophrenic: Poetry from a Beautiful Brain by Kerenza Ryan
18. Apocalyptic Best Practices: A Unique approach to fear and change by Elisebeth VanderWeil
19. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
20. Being Huemann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith E. Heumann
21. The Pretty One: On life, pop culture, disability, and other reasons to fall in love with me by Keah Brown
22. Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Diabled Body by Rebekah Taussig
23. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong
24. Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment by James I. Charlton
25. I Am Not a Label by Cerrie Burnell
26. Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstances by Mallory Weggemann
27. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
28. Life in the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education by Katie Rose Guest Pryal
29. Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution by Judith Heumann
30. The Disability Experience: Working Toward Belonging by Hannalora Leavitt
31. When the Chant Comes by Kay Ulanday Barrett
32. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
33. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison
34. Be Different by John Elder Robison
35. Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening by John Elder Robison
36. Moving Violations: Warzones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence  by John Hockenberry
37. Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space by Amanda Leduc
38. Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin
39. Calling all Minds: How to Think and Create Like an Inventor by Temple Grandin
40. The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s by Temple Grandin
41. Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding social mysteries through autism’s unique perspectives by Temple Grandin
42. Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer
43. Find Another Dream by Maysoon Zayid
44. Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life by Harriet McBryde Johnson
45. If at Birth You Don’t Succeed: My Adventures with Disaster and Destiny by Zach Anner
46. Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History by Corbett O’Toole
47. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
48. Staring: How We Look by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
49. Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio by Anne Finger
50. Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled by Nancy Mairs
51. In the Province of God by Kenny Fries
52. The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory by Kenny Fries
53. Body, Remember: A Memoir by Kenny Fries
54. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life by Margaret Price 
55. The Obsessive Joy of Autism by Julia Bascom 
56. Blind: A Memoir by Belo Cipriani 
57. Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome by Jason Kingley and Mitchell Levitz
58. Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by Adrienne Maree Brown
59. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown
60. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare
61. Feminist Queer Crip by Alison Kafer
62. ASL Saved My Life…Until it Didn’t by Jenni Kleinman Berebitsky
63. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
64. Disabled Leadership by Dr. Tom A. Wiggins
65. Deaf Utopia: A Memoir – and a Love Letter to a Way of Life coauthored by Nyle DiMarco
66. Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally by Emily Ladau
67. Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong
68. What Doesn’t Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness – Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller
69. A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome by Ariel Henley 
70. Just Human: The Quest for Disability Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion by Arielle Silverman, PhD
71. Different, Not Less: A neurodivergent’s guide to embracing your true self and finding your happily ever after by Cholé Hayden
72. How I See It: A Personal and Historical View of Disability by H Penny Mishkin
73. Successful to Burnt Out: Experiences of Women on the Autism Spectrum by Karletta Abianac 
74. Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer’s World by Thom Hartmann
75. More the Same than Different: What I Wish People Knew About Respecting and Including People with Disabilities by Lorraine Cannistra
76. Not a Poster Child: Living Well with a Disability – A Memoir by Francine Falk-Allen
77. My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church by Amy Kenny
78. The ADHD Advantage: What You Thought was a Diagnosis May Be Your Greatest Strength by Dale Archer, MD
79. Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overconing Adversity by David A. Paterson
80. Unleash Different: Achieving Business Success Through Disability by Rich Donovan 
81. Crazy, Who Me?: My Journey as a Leader Overcoming Depression by John Panigas
82. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity by Simi Linton
83. Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity by Karen Nakamura
84. Defiant by Michael Scott Monje Jr.
85. Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada by L. Ben-Moshe, C. Chapman, et al.
86. Dissonant Disabilities: Women With Chronic Illness Explore Their Lives by Michelle Owen (Author), Diane Driedger (Editor)
87. Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor’s Journey to Broadway’s Biggest Stage by Mickey Rowe
88. Goalkeeper: Memoir of Poet Peter Street by Peter Street , N.E. McMorran, et al.
89. How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man’s Quest for Independence by Mark O’Brien and Gillian Kendall
90. Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw
91. Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking by Julia Bascom
92. Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir by Terry Galloway
93. On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity by Daniel Bowman Jr.
94. Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto
95. Rough Waters: From Surviving to Thriving with a Progressive Muscular Dystrophy by Heather C. Markham
96. Sick: A Memoir by Porochista Khakpour
97. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes
98. Still Me by Christopher Reeve
99. The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabled by Robert Francis Murphy
100. The Difference That Disability Makes by Rod Michalko
101. The Ghost in My Brain: How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back by Clark Elliott
102. Typed Words, Loud Voices by Various, Amy Sequenzia, et al.
103. Walking Papers: The Accident that Changed My Life, and the Business that Got Me Back on My Feet by Francesco Clark
104. Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability by Paul K. Longmore
105. The Fully Recovered Mindset by Maddie Neibanck