Finding a home in madness: Hermit crab essays as creative research method & pedagogy
Leanne Toshiko Simpson, Rowan McCandless, Sara Hashemi · Disability Studies Quarterly · 2025
In this autoethnographic analysis of the process of writing and teaching hermit crab essays, we explore how storytelling “shells” allow us to narrate disability in relation to the social structures that contextualize and shape our lived experiences. Engaging from the varied perspectives of a workshop teacher, a professional writer and a student creative, we offer theoretical and practical framings of this narrative form as a particularly generative mad writing method. In particular, this paper argues that hermit crab essays support disability arts in creating a deeply embodied writing and reading experience while helping reclaim narrative agency over institutional documents and language that may not reflect marginalized perspectives.