Marissa Lingen's Writing Workshop Processing Vertigo

[jesse_the_k]

Marissa Lingen (mrissa here) is a disabled SF writer. She’s been publishing short stories since 2001—over 200 so far. Most of her work is quite short, and I’m delighted at how her subtle implications generate detailed worlds and relationships.

Her disability experience informs her work. One of my faves is “A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places”, free to read in print or in audio at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Like the author, the viewpoint character has vertigo.

Her monthly newsletter alerted me that she’s

leading a writing workshop where people can process their vertigo experiences through the written word.

FREE
23 November 2025 1700 GMT
must register in advance or more info
ar220@st-andrews.ac.uk

FULL DETAILS:
https://dateful.com/eventlink/1965359842

She’s eager to spread the word to people directly or indirectly affected by vertigo—please share the Dateful link far and wide.

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Free Story, Essay & Interview

The Sept-Oct 2018/issue 24 of Uncanny Magazine: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction is a triple Marissa Lingen-fest

Flash story (1133 words): This Will Never Happen to You

Essay (1066 words): Malfunctioning Space Stations

The space station that is science fiction has been broken for years now. It hurts as we get ignored and stereotyped and bumped around, and I know you thought you were going to get by with one guy with a banana clip over his eyes as the only disabled person in it with you. But you need the rest of us. We’re the ones who know what it’s like. We’ve been dreaming this all along, and we can help you fix it. We may be the only ones who can.

Interview (1874 words): Marissa Lingen by Sandra Odell

The question I am asked most often by people who don’t know much about my disability is: what did you do? I didn’t do anything. Which means that there’s nothing they can do to have this not happen to them. And that’s terrifying. It’s very vulnerable, looking at other people and saying, yes, that could happen to me, the parts of my body that now work could betray me, things that I think are fundamental to me could slip away from me forever, and there are things I can do to make that less likely, but there’s nothing I can do to make it impossible. Bad things are not always correlated with bad people, or with stupid mistakes. Quite often they just happen. And this is a metaphysical truth of the universe that a great many people do not want to think about, ever. It would be so much more comforting if I had done something foolhardy that they could avoid. If I could be a cautionary tale. But I’m not; I’m a person whose body does excellently well at some things and dreadfully at others.

She swerved into SF from studying physics, so it’s not surprising that she has (as of today) 31 short stories published in Nature and Nature Physics. Those are paywalled, but your library may offer you free access.

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Her writer blog links to scores of other free-to-read-online stories