Anonymous’s son is doing beautifully in a mainstream school. She’s met many wonderful teachers and therapists because of him.
Cheri Brackett is a Psychotherapist and certified Spiritual Director who lives in Asheville, NC, with her husband, Tom, and daughter, Audrey. She delights in journeying with individuals and families who find themselves in places of “otherness” in their lives. She is also a speaker, painter, and freelance writer. Cheri can be reached at cabrackett@bellsouth.net.
Grey Brown is the author of When They Tell Me from Finishing Line Press, 2009, and Staying In, winner of the North Carolina Writers’ Network Chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in the Violet, The Greensboro Review, Iris, The West Coast Poetry Journal, Mothering Magazine, Cold Mountain Review, Wilmington Review, Blue Pitcher, Paris Atlantic, and others. Grey is the director of the literary arts program for Health Arts Network at Duke Medical Center. She is currently working on her first full length collection of poems, to be released by Turning Point Press in 2010.
Kristina Chew is an Associate Professor of Classics at Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey. She is writing a book, We Go with Him about autism, language, and translation; has published a number of articles about literature about autism, disabilities studies, and literature; and has made numerous presentations about advocacy, teaching college students who have ASDs, and literature about autism. From 2006-2009 she wrote two widely-read blogs about autism, Autism Vox and the autism blog at Change.org; she now writes daily about life with Charlie on the road in autismland on her blog, We Go With Him. She has also published a translation of Virgil’s Georgics (2002) and written about classics and multiculturalism. Her son, Charlie, was born in 1997.
Barbara Crooker’s book, Radiance, won the 2005 Word Press First Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her second book, Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), won the 2009 Paterson Prize for Literary Excellence. Her poems appear in a variety of literary journals and many anthologies, including Good Poems for Hard Times (Garrison Keillor, editor; Viking Penguin). She has won a number of awards, including the WB Yeats Society of NY Prize (Grace Schulman, judge), the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Prize (Stanley Kunitz, judge), and the Rosebud Ekphrastic Poetry Award. She is the mother of a twenty-five-year-old son with autism.
Ann Douglas is the creator of the internationally bestselling The Mother of All® Books series and The Mother of All Solutions, the coauthor of The Unofficial Guide to Having a Baby and Trying Again: A Guide to Pregnancy After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss, and along with her daughters, wrote the award-winning body image book for teens, Body Talk: The Straight Goods on Fitness, Nutrition, and Feeling Great about Yourself. She contributes to numerous pregnancy and parenting magazine in addition to her own columns in Yahoo! Canada, and Conceive Magazine. Ann is the mother of four children, ages 10 through 20, including Ian, who has Asperger’s syndrome. She lives with her family in Canada.
Drama Mama is an actor, teacher, and mother of two girls, one on the autism spectrum, one not. She writes about her life on her blog, Like A Shark.
Kimberly K. Farrar is a writer and teacher currently living in Astoria, New York. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, and an M.A. in TESOL from Hunter College. She teaches in her community. Her work has been published in Long Shot, Lullwater Review, Mudfish, The Ledge, Voices of Autism, and other literary journals.
Anjie Kokan is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and The Wasteland Poets. Her work has appeared in Mamazine, Free Verse, Bellowing Ark, and Chrysanthemum.
Veronika Hill is a former software programmer who is finding her passion as a writer and mother. She has one son, nicknamed Taz, who is extremely active and alert. He keeps her busy from the wee hours of the morning until lights-out at night. When she’s not following him around town, she can often be found Googling her special interests obsessively.
Maggie Kast is the author of A Crack Between the Worlds; A dancer’s memoir of loss, faith, and family (Resource Publications, 2009). She has published fiction in The Sun, Nimrod, Rosebud, Paper Street, Kaleidoscope, and others, and essays in Image: Art, Faith, Mystery, Writer’s Chronicle, and others. She teaches writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Janet Kay works as a creative director and writer in St. Louis, Missouri. She is at work on her first novel.
Susan T. Layug’s personal essays have won awards both in the United States and her native land, the Philippines. Some of her work has been produced and read on Chicago Public Radio. Her poetry has also appeared online and in print, the most recent of which is in Field of Mirrors: An Anthology of Philippine American Writers.
Grief Suite (CustomWords) is Bobbi Lurie’s most recent collection of poetry. Her previous books, The Book I Never Read and Letter from the Lawn, were also published by CustomWords.
Mama Mara worked as an editor and speechwriter until 1996, when she answered her true calling by becoming an autism treatment specialist, educational paraprofessional, insurance rights advocate, speech therapist, pharmaceutical expert, and mental health “counselor” (in other words, a special-needs mother). She lives in Wisconsin with her two boys, Rocky and Taz, who absolutely make her life worthwhile.
Bruce Mills teaches literature at Kalamazoo College. In his field, he has authored two books, including, most recently, Poe, Fuller, and the Mesmeric Arts: Transition States in the American Renaissance (2005). In the last few years, he has turned to creative nonfiction, which has been published in The Georgia Review and New England Review. His essay “Flood Plain” is part of a recently completed memoir entitled An Archaeology of Yearning, a book that explores memory, story, and desire in a home transformed by autism. In addition to teaching, Bruce has also been active in his local autism society and presently serves as a board member on The Gray Center for Social Learning and Understanding. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his wife, Mary Holtapp, daughter Sarah, and son Jacob.
Mary McLaughlin has carved out a space in small-town New Hampshire, where she works in student affairs and teaches writing at Colby-Sawyer College, and in the blogosphere, where she writes as MOM-Not-Otherwise-Specified. Both her blog and her life revolve around her son.
MothersVox blogs at Autism’s Edges. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
Aileen Murphy is the author of a chapbook, There Will Be Cats (Finishing Line Press) and the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Virginia Tech, where she has taught writing since 1994. She is also the Co-Director of the Southwest Virginia Writing Project. She lives with her husband, Paul, and her two children in Blacksburg, Virginia.
During the 1980s, B. E. Pinkham was an artist and earned all the fine art degrees she would ever want. During the 1990s, she was a landlord and acquired all the buildings and tenants that she would ever want. By 2000, she was a mother and had all the children she would ever want. Since then, she’s been writing. She hasn’t yet written everything she wants. Her work has appeared in Brain, Child Magazine. She is seeking a publisher for her memoir, Let Me Look at You, in which autism plays a shockingly minor role.
Lesley Quinn is an essayist and writing coach who specializes in assisting high school seniors create deeply felt and compelling college application essays. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous literary magazines and anthologies. She lives with her husband, a psychologist, and her daughter when she’s visiting, in Berkeley, California.
Ralph James Savarese is the author of Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption, which Newsweek called a “real life love story and a passionate manifesto for the rights of people with neurological disabilities.” His poems, essays, translations, criticism, and opinion pieces have appeared, among other places, in American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, New England Review, Southwest Review, Modern Poetry In Translation, The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Houston Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and The Des Moines Register. In January 2010, he will publish, with his wife, a co-edited issue of Disability Studies Quarterly devoted to the topic of “Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity.”
Susan Segal is the author of Aria, a novel, and numerous awardwinning short stories. She is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California and an editor at Coast Magazine in Orange County, CA, where she lives with her son. She is at work on a collection of short stories.
Laura Shumaker is the author of A Regular Guy: Growing Up with Autism, a memoir about raising her autistic son, Matthew, to young adulthood. She is a regular contributor to NPR Perspectives and a columnist for www.5minutesforspecialneeds.com. Laura’s essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times, the East Bay Monthly, The Autism Advocate, on cnn.com, A Cup of Comfort, and Voices of Autism among others. Laura speaks regularly to schools and book and disability groups and lives in Lafayette, California with her husband, Peter, and her three sons.
Chantal Sicile-Kira is an autism advocate, International speaker, parent, and award-winning author known for providing hope and practical strategies to both families and educators. Chantal’s first book, Autism Spectrum Disorders, was the recipient of the 2005 Autism Society of America’s Outstanding Literary Work of the Year Award. Her books, Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum and Autism Life Skills, are also published by Penguin. Chantal is a blogger on the Huffington Post, moderates webinars for momsfightingautism.com, and occasionally hosts radio shows on Autism One Radio. Her family was highlighted in Newsweek and on MTV’s documentary series True Life “I Have Autism,” which was the recipient of a 2008 Voice Award.
Kristen Spina is a freelance writer living in New York whose writing has appeared in numerous trade and consumer publications. She is currently at work on a novel.
Christine Stephan, a program certified RDI® consultant, lives in Virginia with her husband and three sons. She and her family can often be found navigating the streets of her hometown by bicycle. Christine writes about her family, autism, and RDI on her blog, DaySixtySeven.
Carolyn Walker is an essayist, memoirist, poet, journalist, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Hunger Mountain, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Encore. She has authored a memoir about the life of her developmentally disabled daughter, called Every Least Sparrow. A graduate of the Vermont College Master of Fine Arts in Writing program, she is married and the mother of three children. She lives in Michigan.
Emily Willingham is a biologist and freelance writer and editor. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her soul mate and spouse, “The Viking,” and their three sons, TH, Dubya, and Little. Her published work includes the upcoming Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology and pieces in Backpacker and other national, regional, and local publications.
In addition to being the primary companion of his now 28-year-old autistic son, James C. Wilson is a professor of English and journalism at the University of Cincinnati. He has published five books, including Weather Reports from the Autism Front: A Father’s Memoir of His Autistic Son (2008).
