Finding Disability Community During Cow Tipping Press Internship

by Beja Puškášová ’26

Last semester, I was fortunate enough to get a chance to intern at Cow Tipping Press, which is a disability justice focused publishing organization based in St Paul. My internship consisted of five online creative writing classes, helping with the process of publishing students’ written works as well as three teacher training sessions.

My first encounter with Cow Tipping Press was at a book festival that I went to in the Twin Cities. I met Rachel Lieberman, who is the organization’s program director, as well as one of the authors. I quickly learned that Cow Tipping Press exclusively publishes the work of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, as well as autistic authors. Even though I was not able to apply for the internship then due tofor my immigration status, the organization’s mission deeply resonated with me and I made sure to apply as early as possible, at the beginning of my sophomore year. 

Shortly after, I received an email, congratulating me on becoming one of Cow Tipping’s teachers! With the help of Macalester’s ISP and Career Exploration, I was able to complete my CPT and obtain the permission to work off-campus in the US. My first paid task was attending the first teacher training at The Arc Minnesota. It was an incredible experience. Identifying myself as a disabled trans woman, the fact that we did not only introduce ourselves with our real names and real pronouns, but also our access needs made me feel seen and accepted there like in no other space. 

After the first training was done, I started the process of brainstorming creative writing exercises, making Google slides presentations and selecting which topics and authors I wanted to cover in my five week syllabus. In my first class, we exchanged our names, pronouns and access needs, as the Cow Tipping training encouraged me to do, and read Thomas Robinson’s Advice to Daughter for inspiration together and started writing. The Cow Tipping staff, students and volunteers who were also present were nice enough to educate others who misgendered me. Being a teacher in a class full of people with disabilities quickly confirmed to me that inclusion is much easier than a lot of abled people make it out to be, which also helped me with my own empowerment as a disabled female student at Mac.

While the entire teaching and learning process was really fun, it also made me realize what kind of challenging issues some people with disabilities face. While I did ask for the students’ access needs, some students felt insecure about their disabilities, and did not feel safe sharing their needs with me until later on. This was even sadder to me because of the fact that this was a class that consisted of mostly people with disabilities. It made me think about how a lot of shame is created about the disabled label itself, and how that affects people who are both visibly and invisibly disabled by the system we live in. 

In the last week of my internship, the students told me which works they feel comfortable with being published, all that work was done, and it was time for the last teacher training. Despite all of us coming to the space from very different backgrounds, Cow Tipping Press for me was able to create an experience of pan-disabled community and understanding. To this day, I still come to visit the Cow Tipping Press table at the State Fair book festival every time it is happening to see their new books and greet my old friends. I would definitely recommend this opportunity to students interested in teaching and publishing!

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To see examples of student writings from a Cow Tipping Press class, check out this issue’s Craft Corner!