A collection curated by me, Judith Carter, Executive Director MZS Press, LLC and business partner to MZS. I’m most proud of being a Single Mom to an Exceptional Son, a Legal Advocate and Special Education Advocate. I’ve been in the “Special Needs”/”Disability” community my entire life. For the record I’m not fond of these labels, or any label for that matter, but use the for general purposes, putting aside disability discourse.

Collection Creation

My son was born early, by medical intervention to save his life from serious complications. I was able to hold him for a moment and then the NICU team lovingly took him. Then, at 7 weeks old, he was hospitalized with his first documented seizures. I officially became a “special needs” mom when he was 17 months old, diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (Autism Spectrum Disorder). At 19 months he suffered a global regression, where he lost every developmental skill: walking, talking, eating, everything. There was more happening. This led to the discovery and diagnosis of a life-threatening variant of a very rare seizure disorder. Our journey had begun!

A voracious reader, I had always turned to books whether it was to learn, laugh, educate or escape. This time was no different. But every time I went to a bookstore to find these books the section was only a shelf, if the store had a section at all, and the majority of titles were academic and parenting advice books. Never once did I encounter a comprehensive selection. I had to rely on friends to point me in the right direction. This was how I learned how much there was out there, but there wasn’t a place—one place—to find many options.

Meanwhile, the arts were miraculously how I found the way to communicate with my son and give him the ability to communicate and express himself. Over time and with recommendations from our community, I found many amazing books. This collection has but a few!

About our Collection

In this collection/section, you’ll find Fiction & Non-Fiction, Memoirs, Biographies, Graphic Novels, Academic Texts, and much more. Titles strive to be inclusive of all people with disabilities: physical, visual, hearing, mental, medical and/or developmental; colors, demographics, and identities. Some are funny. Some are novels where the protagonist or main character has a disability of some kind. Some are academic books on disabilities in the Arts, inclusive of visual arts, music, performance arts, dance, film, television and literature. There is classic literature, and books on people that you may have never known or realized that have/had a disability.

Our Assurance

We are pricing all items at our cost without a profit. It’s more important to us to create/curate this collection and share it. So we're putting the margins very low, just enough to pay for creating and maintaining the collection and getting the information out there.

I've curated over 250 titles for the collection, so it will be like the rest of the store (and all of us), always changing and evolving. We’re starting the collection with 50 titles, 30 new titles and 20 that were already in our inventory.

I’m in search of the best spoken word books on the Arts to be added to the collection and to the store in general.

If you have any recommendations on books that would be a great fit for this collection, please email me at mzspress@gmail.com, I would love to hear from you. The more we share, the more we know and the more we know the more we grow.