Team

The Squeaky Wheel is fully operated by a talented group of creative disabled people. If you’re interested in joining our team, please reach out to us through our contact form.

Steven Verdile
Editor-in-Chief

Steven is a designer and writer with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. He lives in New York City with his girlfriend, spending his mornings drinking iced coffee and his evenings binging television and going to see musicals. An advocate for authentic representation in media, he created The Squeaky Wheel to amplify disabled voices and bring humor to the nuances of living with a disability.

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Margaret Camilletti
Vice President

Margaret is a neurodivergent and chronically ill software engineer, actor, and writer living in NYC. She has been involved with The Squeaky Wheel since its creation in 2021, and is proud to be part of this amazing community of hilarious disabled people.

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Nimmy Dumm
Chief Copy Editor

Nimmy is a copyeditor in Colorado living with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited retinal disease that causes low vision. She loves animals (all of them), words, and comedy.

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Woonie
Staff Writer

Woonie is a lover of salty licorice, gummy bears and the outdoors. Originally from Malaysia, she attended college in Iowa and is currently living in California. She is a writer, runner, traveler, volunteer who happens to have Retinitis Pigmentosa, and a human being hoping to change the world through words, stories and laughter.

Leslie Moon
Staff Writer

Leslie Moon runs The Writer's Bloc on YouTube, is a Script Editor and a Video Producer. He lives with Chronic Pain Syndrome & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and is based in the U.K.

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Alexia Kemerling
Staff Writer

Alexia is a Hard of Hearing writer from Ohio. She pretends to be good at lip reading, but is actually just an expert at bullsh*tting. She is a strong advocate for disability rights and for eating breakfast foods at all hours of the day.

Kathleen Downes
Staff Writer

Kathleen Downes (she/her) is a licensed social worker, board certified patient advocate, blogger, and disability activist from suburban New York. Her work is scheduled to appear in the forthcoming anthology The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet, a collection focusing on the intersection of disability and trauma from Sable Books.

Nate Woogen
Staff Writer

Nate is standup comedian and improviser from Chicago. He lives with mild ataxic cerebral palsy and completed the Second City Writing Program. He loves wordplay, horror movies, musicals and operas.

Kevin Schaefer
Staff Writer

Kevin (he/him) is a writer, podcaster, and lifelong lover of all things pop culture. He's seen Hamilton on Broadway and has been to Disney World too many times to count. He has SMA Type 2 and is currently co-writing a graphic novel.

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Zephyr Ash Ostrowski
Staff Writer

Zephyr is a queer autistic film critic and curator as well as a small-time horror writer. Her tastes range from Cronenberg to Cats (2019) and they're proud of it. If given the opportunity, they'd love to write for the Criterion Collection or Rifftrax.

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Jerome Palliser
Staff Writer

Jerome lives in Chicago and loves history and birds. His goal is to visit every National Park, and never leaves home without his charcuterie board of invisible disabilities.

Mia Ocean
Staff Writer

Mia lives with multiple sclerosis, two cuddly pit bulls, and her amazing partner. She was born and raised in Florida and apologies in advance for everything inappropriate she does.

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Julia Lee Harter
Staff Writer

Julia Lee Harter is a Texas based neurodivergent and chronically ill writer, journalist and lover of all things cozy. She’s currently working on a young adult romance novel about loving a body that doesn’t always love you back.

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Amanda Russel
Staff Writer

Amanda Russel (she/her) writes, illustrates, and works in the nonprofit world. She likes coffee, cats, cooking, baking, drag, and music. She is a complete paraplegic due to transverse myelitis caused by a lupus flare, and uses a manual wheelchair fulltime.

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Kate Ryan
Staff Writer

Kate Ryan is a queer writer, disability advocate, Unitarian Universalist, atheist, social justice non-warrior who is remarkably busy for someone without a paid job. She lives in the liberal bastion of Massachusetts, and has multiple disabilities including autism and chronic pain. She enjoys baking, reading, being outside, being in water, dogs, and showing people pictures of her niblings.

Melanie
Staff Writer

Melanie is an author and poet who lives with ME/CFS. She enjoys writing stories that explore mental distress from a non-pathologizing, empowering perspective. When she's not writing, you can find her perusing a flea market or singing along to 90s feminist anthems. If you can't find her, she's probably taking a nap. 

Lori Adams
Staff Writer

Lori is a writer, artist, and biology nerd that lives with multiple disabilities. She's an advocate for disability rights, equality, and sleeping in. Sometimes she's serious and writes about disabilities and public health, but she's always squeaky.

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We also would like to express thanks to our past writers, our new contributing writers, and our illustrator Frutilily