Celebrating Disabled People’s Creativity, Experience and Voices on the International Day of Disabled People
Pools and Prejudice: Death in the Shallows
On this International Day of Disabled People, there’s no better time to celebrate stories that challenge expectations, confront prejudice, and centre disabled lives with honesty and strength. That’s why I wrote Pools and Prejudice: Death in the Shallows— I hoped to balance tension, wit, and social commentary with rare precision.
If you’re looking for a book that will both grip you and make you think differently about the world, Pools and Prejudice: Death in the Shallows is exactly that. Today, we celebrate disabled creativity, disabled resilience, disabled truth-telling.
I wanted the plot to shine a light on the realities of disabled people navigating a world that often refuses to see us clearly.
The story follows Meg whose experiences of exclusion, institutional failure and everyday ableism are woven through a mystery that unfolds in and around a local swimming pool—a community space that becomes a microcosm of society’s attitudes towards disabled people.
I refused to soften the truth, and avoided speaking in metaphors or inspirational clichés. Instead, to give readers a narrative grounded in lived experience and disability equality: flawed systems, hidden hierarchies, the exhausting bureaucracy disabled people face, and the emotional resilience required simply to exist within them. And also hoped to capture the warmth, humour, friendship, and the small acts of solidarity that keep people going.
Readers say:
“Characters bring texture, complexity and humanity, each revealing different sides of disability, trust and belonging.
Pools and Prejudice is more than a mystery; it’s a challenge to look deeper—beneath the surface of institutions, beneath polite conversations, and beneath assumptions about what disabled lives should look like. It’s bold, unapologetic storytelling from a disabled writer who understands that representation is not a luxury but a necessity.”
On days like today, when the world pauses to recognise disabled people, their rights and their contributions, it reminds us why authentic stories matter. They expose injustice. They provoke conversation. They forge connection. And, importantly, they carve space for disabled people to be protagonists in their own narratives—complex, fierce, and fully realised.
Furthermore in order to respect Disabled People’s Identity and highlight Stereotypes, I was careful not to counter the negative stereotypes imposed on disabled people with equally toxic positive ones.
