Episode 1:
Telling Stories to Change Systems

Producer Emily Blyth takes the hosting chair for a conversation with Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware, a scholar, playwright, author, and artist who is helping to build a better future that centers and celebrates trans and disabled experiences.

Episode 2:
Creating at the Threshold

Producer Coco Nielsen joins multidisciplinary artist Kim Edgar to talk cultivating artistic community in the North, moving towards disability justice through secure food and housing, and the role of interest and pleasure in artistic practice.

Episode 3:
Quilting a More Just Future

Executive producer Emilia Nielsen returns to the hosting chair for a conversation with Dr. Jenna Reid, a textile artist who works to uplift and celebrate disabled artists both through her activism and her work as artistic director of Kickstart Disability.

Episode 1: 
Chronic Pain as a Relational Experience

Emilia sits down with Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau, a scholar and poet who embraces uncertainty and doubt through his creative praxis, builds queer kinship by thinking through pain relationally, and whose work on recovering historical articulations of pain helps shed light on how we think about pain today.

Episode 2: 
“The Field Empties Out and That’s Where Things Can Grow”

Emilia is joined by Julie Devaney, a chronically-ill practitioner of psychotherapy, and patient advocate who believes in the power of cultivating presence in order to make space for healing, and who turns to fiction writing, in part, to imagine what living with robust health might feel like.

Episode 3: 
 Refusing to be Disciplined by Our Discipline

Emilia sits down with Dr. Ela Przybylo, a polydisciplinary scholar who is exploring and expanding the ideas of eros and pain through her pursuit of feminist, queer, and sexuality studies alongside her work in asexuality studies and feminist open-access publication.

“On Being Ill is an earnest offering to anyone who might resonate with conversations around illness, pain, disability–and why we turn to creativity.”

Coco Nielsen, Producer

Coco Nielsen (they/them) is a queer non-binary white settler who recently moved to the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. They are a visual artist and co-producer of the podcast On Being Ill. Coco’s introduction to the world of audio production was through campus and community radio–which still holds a meaningful place in their heart. Coco finds hope in DIY or DIT (do-it-together) culture and is passionate about cultivating containers where low-barrier skillbuilding and education can flourish. Coco is grateful to anyone who makes them laugh, places that help bring them into mindful presence, and experiences that crack open the purposeful isolation of our urban environments in order to let our humanity show through.

“What a distinct joy to be in conversation with such evocative writers and creative people because of this podcast!”

Emilia Nielsen, Executive Producer

Emilia Nielsen (she/her) is the author of the award-winning book, Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives: Stories of Rage and Repair (University of Toronto Press, 2019) recipient of The American Folklore Society’s Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize as well as two collections of poetry. Body Work (Signature Editions, 2018) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Memorial Award and took third place in the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her first book of poetry, Surge Narrows (Leaf Press, 2013), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She is a professor in the Department of Social Science at York University and teaches in the Health & Society Program. Currently, she divides her time between Tkaronto and Amiskwacîwâskahikan the current and ancestral home of many Indigenous peoples and brought into treaty relationship by Treaties 13 and 6.

“As someone living with chronic illness, working with On Being Ill brought me a sense of community that I hope will extend to our listeners.”

Emily Blyth, Producer

Emily Blyth (she/her) researches structural barriers to health and well-being at Simon Fraser University. Her SSHRC-CGS funded doctoral research examines media and state accountability in response to inequitable and lethal policing. She works with research teams across Canada, where she is grateful to live as a white settler. Growing up as a settler on the traditional lands of the Wendake-Nionwentsïo, Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga, Anishinabewaki and the Missisaguas of the Credit First Nation, territory under the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, Emily is inspired by the values of community support and safety inherent in this agreement. Living now in unceded traditional xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories, she is working to grow connections with community and current and future Elders as she works to address police violence.