"Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn't "look" autistic. But, as he's quick to point out in this memoir, autism "looks" different for just about everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Diagnosed with ASD at age five, McCreary got hit with the performance bug not much later. During a difficult time in junior high, he started journaling,...

Autism is usually portrayed as a checklist of deficits, including difficulties interacting socially, problems in communicating, sensory challenges, and repetitive behavior patterns. This perspective leads to therapies focused on ridding individuals of "autistic" symptoms. Now Dr. Barry M. Prizant, an internationally renowned autism expert, offers a new and compelling paradigm: the most successful approaches to autism don't aim at fixing a person by...

Ten-year-old Benjamin Giroux's iconic poem conveys what it's like to live with autism.

What might it look like for an Autistic, non-binary person who lives with mental illness to live well and with hope? In this book, author and advocate Yenn Purkis reflects on their experiences of life as an Autistic non-binary person who has a diagnosis of atypical schizophrenia. Exploring the intersecting areas of mental health and illness, neurodivergence and neurodiversity, and gender non-conformity, the narrative follows Yenn through experiences...

"An autistic writer's memoir of the detrimental effects of pretending to be normal, and her impassioned call to redefine what is considered a successful life. Sarah Kurchak is autistic. She hasn't let that get in the way of pursuing her dream to become a writer, or to find love, but she has let it get in the way of being in the same room with someone chewing food loudly, and of cleaning her bathroom sink. In I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was...

"[Marshall, an eleven-year-old autistic boy,] lives in a remote juvenile center in Colorado, where he is bullied by the other boys, misunderstood by all of the other staff except Leslie, and so overwhelmed by the sounds and smells in the cafeteria that getting his lunch is a daily terror. During a blizzard, an unexpected mishap for Marshall and Leslie leads to Marshall's disappearance into the wilderness. His father, Jace, knows that Marshall has...

In the unique landscape of the Camargue in the South of France during WW2, a young autistic boy lives on his parents' farm among the salt flats and the flamingos that live there. There are lots of things he doesn't understand, but he does know how to heal animals. He loves routine and music too; every week he goes to market with his mother, to ride his special horse on the town carousel. But then the Germans come, with their guns, and take the town....

"College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Iverson is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has...

"Since the advent of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the importance of music in the lives of autistic people has been widely observed and studied. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory, unusually high rates of absolute or "perfect" pitch, and the effectiveness of music-based therapies abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music scholars and historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models...