Giving Thanks
We wouldn’t be in the position we are without the early support of some folks who believed in Sick Stories from the beginning. Building a community takes a community. We’re especially grateful to:
Business In The Streets for funding our first workshops
ArtReach for funding My Body, My Story in 2023 and 2024
Sam Anis, Vincy Lim, and Harmeet Rehal for embracing Sick Stories beginnings and co-facilitating My Body, My Story
Isabella Iannetta and Kit Lister for helping to bring to life our first ever in-person event
And Clau Souza, for her beautiful design skills with our logo
A little note…
Before we settled on this path, we had a lot of thoughts and conversations around playing a part in capitalism with a for-profit model, which so often exploits and keeps Disabled folk living below the poverty line. However, we are clear in our intentions to be a social enterprise opposed to a non-profit or charity.
We want to provide space and paid opportunities for artists and writers that do not solely rely on grants or the generosity or philanthropy. We sell used books of all genres in an effort to help make titles more affordable, and offer store credit for folks who want to sell to us. In addition, 10% of our quarterly profits will be donated to mutual aid fundraisers for local disabled community members.
Want to support us in this mission to give back? Purchase books from us, purchase our own publications, upgrade your newsletter subscription to paid, or opt to pay more than a suggested rate for a workshop.
We thank you for being here with us.
Who Are We?
Sick Stories exists to bring literary visibility to the 25% of people globally estimated to live with a disability.
Founded by Sophie Lyons, an invisibly disabled, white, queer writer and lifelong reader, we had our beginnings in 2021 as a project to review and celebrate books with disability representation. We quickly noticed the vast underrepresentation within the publishing industry of disabled, chronically ill, and mentally ill voices. What was out there was often filled with harmful tropes or heartwarming personal stories of overcoming adversaries.
In 2023 we paused our book reviews and began offering writing workshops and online spaces for community members to connect, create, and share stories.
In 2025, after expanding our services to micro-publishing original writing, we were still feeling the limits of our impact in a deeply and increasingly troubling world. We went back to our roots of cheering on books, this time from a bookseller’s perspective.
We’re beginning to build a stock of titles written by disabled people and largely featuring disability in one way or another. Our curated lists mean we offer intersectional categorization in ways few other bookstores do. People who have never seen themselves or their loved ones represented in fiction before will have a space to search for these stories from people who truly “get it”.
Sick Stories honours and celebrates the different ways in which individual conditions and identities can intersect. We strive to hold ourselves and others accountable in remaining an anti-ableist, anti-racist, pro 2SLGBTQIA+ space who celebrates intersectionality.
We operate from Tkaronto/Toronto, Turtle Island (Canada), on the ancestral lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat people, plus more whose names have been lost to time and colonization.
We are always open to conversations surrounding how we can make our website and content more accessible and representative of our world. If you have suggestions, please get in touch for a chat.