
Kaleidoscope explores the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts, and the Summer/Fall 2025 issue (#91) is available now. Things are not always as they seem and coming to this realization usually requires a shift in perspective, a lesson learned by young and old alike in this issue.
In the featured essay, “Iron Girl,” Cassandra Brandt was a rarity as an iron worker and welder in a field that was predominately male. At thirty-two, she was a strong, fearless, self-sufficient, and adventurous single mom of a thirteen-year-old daughter. She felt at home on a construction site, hard hat and steel-toed boots on, climbing onto beams several floors above the ground. When a car accident left her paralyzed from the chest down, she went from fiercely independent to utterly dependent in the blink of an eye. It would take time for her to redefine herself and recover her mental toughness.
Artist Erika Marie York is featured in this issue along with many talented writers: Jennifer Lee Austin, David Bachmann, Notty Bumbo, Douglas G. Campbell, Mimi Eagar, Hannah Ehrlich, Elly Katz, Isolde Keilhofer, Rowan MacDonald, Allegra M. Marcell, Deb Robert, Wendy Sheehan, Naomi Stenberg, Poppy Reeves, Mary Ellen Talley, Joseph Trance, Susan Levi Wallach, Devon Wells, and Emily Yates.