Disability may be his lot, but he decided long-ago not to let it control his fate. A collection of humorous essays centered on life with a disability. These essays give a wry look at the obstacles faced while growing up in a small town in Northern Ontario.

Born with spinal muscular atrophy, Matthew Del Papa has been in a wheelchair since the early 1980s. A graduate of Laurentian University (MA Humanities), past president of the Sudbury Writers' Guild, and currently on the board of directors for Wordstock Sudbury Literary Festival, he has been writing steadily since 2005. An amateur local historian and part-time columnist, his work has been published in newspapers and magazines, as well as anthologies such as Spooky Sudbury (Dundurn Press, 2013) and Nothing Without Us Too (Renaissance Press, 2022). He lives in Capreol. Jerry Lewis Told Me I Was Going To Die is his first collection of humorous essays.

Matthew Del Papa's profile page

Reading through Del Papa’s memories, I can almost hear him say, “Picture it. Capreol, 1978.” His unfiltered, touching, sometimes self-deprecating, and often funny-as-heck anecdotes show us how he tenaciously navigates through the many layers of ableism without skipping a rimshot.

Cait Gordon, Co-editor of Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too