Dorothy Ellen Palmer is a disabled writer, binge knitter, mom of two, and a retired teacher, improv coach, and union activist. Illicitly conceived in Hurricane Hazel and adopted at age three, she grew up in suburban Toronto and now lives in Burlington. For three decades, she worked in three provinces as both an elementary teacher and a high school English/Drama teacher. She taught on a Mennonite Colony, in a four-room schoolhouse, an Adult Learning Centre attached to a prison, and a highly diverse new high school in Pickering. She created the only high school improv program in Canada, and coached for The Canadian Improv Games. Each year, she toured elementary schools with her improv students, presenting interactive workshops to fight bullying, racism, sexism, sexual harassment, homophobia and ableism with good old-fashioned fun. For over a decade, her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary and disability journals. Her semi-autobiographical novel, When Fenelon Falls (Coach House Press, 2010), features a disabled adoptee in the Moonwalk-Woodstock summer of 1969.

Begun at the Banff Writers' Colony, it was hailed by Quill and Quire and long-listed for the ReLit Award. With the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council, her adoption-disability memoir, Falling for Myself, (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019), was acclaimed by Sue Carter in The Toronto Star, featured in The Globe and Mail, excerpted in Reader's Digest and continues to appear on industry blogs and book lists such as Pickle Me This and CBC Books Summer Reads. She sits on the Accessibility Advisory Board of the Festival of Literary Diversity, (FOLD) and is a proud member of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO). A sought-after panelist and speaker, her appearances in the last year include FOLD, GritLit, WOTS, The Next Chapter, The Eh List, and CBC Radio. She can always be found tweeting @depalm.