How many disabled authors have won the Carnegie Medal, I hear you ask? Precisely one, as far as I can tell: Rosemary Sutcliff, in 1959. What makes it more enraging is plenty of nondisabled authors have won the award via their books about disabled characters. 🙃
Rosemary Sutcliff (1920 — 1992) wrote dozens of bestselling historical novels. Many of her books were set in Roman Britain. Her best known books now are The Eagle of the Ninth series and her retellings of the King Arthur legends.
I only found Sutcliff late last year. I tweeted about her, and a lot of people got in touch to let me know they loved her books as children, but didn't know she was disabled. I wondered why that is. My main theory of why this might be is...
that Sutcliff was visibly disabled, but almost none of the editions of her work I can find feature an author photo. It's a strange omission, as Sutcliff included a lot of disabled characters in her historical novels.
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