Kaleidoscope Goes Digital

Perhaps, it was inevitable - the country’s oldest magazine of disability literature and art is going digital. As of January, Kaleidoscope will no longer publishes in hard copy. The magazine that for 30 years has given writers with disabilities the opportunity to see their work arrive in an envelope in the mailbox or see it sitting among the periodicals on a library periodical shelf will now, like its companion periodicals, Breath and Shadow and Wordgathering, be completely online.

 To those for whom publication means having something concrete to hold in their hands, this is likely to feel like a loss, but in another sense it is likely to be a boon in disguise. From their new venue at www.KaleidoscopeOnline.org, the work of the writers and artists it features, will hit a much larger audience. Gail Willmott, the journal’s editor, has widely kept access to the magazine free on line – subscriptions were $12 a year – making it its contents available not just to search engines but to links in Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other sites. It also potentially resolves problems for visually impaired or blind readers who, unable to read a traditional print journal, will now be able to access it through screen readers (though this is an issue still to be worked out.)

 Kaleidoscope holds an important place in disability literature, being among the first to publish writers like Anne Finger and John Hockenberry, who are now well established. It was also through Kaleidoscope magazine that a call for poetry was put out that resulted in the publication of Towards Solomon’s Mountain in 1986, the first volume of poetry made up entirely of the work of writers with disabilities. Let’s hope the new twenty-first century incarnation of Kaleidoscope proves just as rewarding.