A new book billed as a guide to life for disabled women and non-binary people has sold for six figures, which is believed to be one of the biggest book deals ever for a disabled woman in the UK.
Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girl’s Guide to Life by Guardian journalist, author and broadcaster Frances Ryan was sold to Penguin Random House’s Fig Tree imprint after a nine-publisher auction.
Ryan said the interest from publishers showed that they were “coming to understand that there’s a huge audience for stories by and about people who aren’t white, middle class or non-disabled.
“I think that really reflects how titles about disability are finally being recognised as mainstream and vital,” she added.
Helen Garnons-Williams, publishing director of Fig Tree, who bought the book from literary agent Diana Beaumont at Marjacq, said Who Wants Normal? is an “electrifying mix of memoir, handbook, celebration and call to action, which will offer support, inspiration and a sense of solidarity to the many, many women with disabilities and long-term health issues”.
Who Wants Normal? will explore six topics, including education, body image and relationships. It will see Ryan drawing on her own experiences as well as feature interviews with more than 40 people with mental and physical health conditions. Interviewees include actors Selma Blair, Ruth Madeley and Jameela Jamil, broadcasters Sinéad Burke and Fearne Cotton and writer Jack Monroe.
Ryan said she wanted to create a book that challenged assumptions around disabled women. “Disabled women in culture are often still either made invisible or two-dimensional: where life is portrayed as miserable with low expectations or you’re told to ‘overcome’ it without acknowledging it’s part of you,” she said.
“I wanted to put together a book that would challenge these assumptions and show what it is to be a young woman with a disability or mental or physical health condition today: the joy, accomplishments and hurdles,” she continued.
Ryan said she hoped readers “who perhaps haven’t found themselves represented before will be able to see themselves in these pages”.
Named the UK’s sixth most influential disabled person by the Shaw Trust in 2021, Ryan had her debut book, Crippled, shortlisted in 2020 for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. The book looked at how austerity had led to the demonisation of disabled people. Alice O’Keeffe in the Guardian described Crippled as a “blistering polemic”, and the book was made into the drama Hen Night for the BBC in 2021.
Fig Tree will publish Who Wants Normal? in spring 2025.
