Launches, 2025

I’ve been busy this year and last, with various collaborations: parts of bigger projects, which are now coming to fruition.

Next Thursday (the 18th of September, 7-8:45pm) is the launch of two animations that I worked on, together with my partner Sonny and a great little team – all autistic, apart from (probably) the animator. I’m particularly excited about these! They’re only short, but I think they’ll have a real impact on how a lot of people think about autism. The launch is part of a larger celebration of Thriving Autistic’s Discovery Programme.

The animations are titled Discovering You’re Autistic and Lightbulb Moments – Being Autistic. The first is a short introduction to some of the key insights that can help autistic people to feel okay about themselves, and their place in the world; naturally, the same idea can also be helpful for anyone sharing their lives, or even some space, with autistic people! I wrote about this animation, and the motivation behind it, for Thriving Autistic, but unfortunately that will only go live when the animations are up.

The Thursday after next (the 25th of September, 7-8pm) is the Scottish launch of Someone Like Me, a mass-market anthology of non-fiction by autistic writers, edited by Clem Bastow and Jo Case. This is at Lighthouse, Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop – my favourite bookshop, despite stiff competition – and will also be streamed online.

My chapter for this one is called Monotropic Superdrive at Home, and it’s about growing up knowing that people thought I was weird, and what it took to feel okay with that. Quite a lot of that is about my mum, and Weird Pride, and Monotropism.

So far, I’ve read about eight of the other chapters in this collection, and I’m blown away by the quality of the writing, the breadth of insight and the emotional weight of them all.

On Monday, I attended the first book launch for a chapter I have a book in, online: Neurodivergent Education and Lifelong Learning, edited by Nathan Keates and Krysia Waldock. I wasn’t on the panel, but my coauthor Debi Gregory was there to talk about our chapter, Neurodiversity in Higher Education: Reflections From Lived Experience. It was a great event – all of the authors talked very compellingly about their chapters, and then we had Damian Milton and Brian Irvine enthusing about the book as a whole.

Next month (the 6th of October, 6–8:15pm) sees the launch of the other book by these editors that I have a chapter in, Applications & Practices for Empowering Neurodivergent Learners. This is a hybrid event (online and in London). I co-wrote the opening chapter for this one, with Samantha Friedman: What Autistic-Led Theories Mean for Education. I covered some similar ground in Autistics on Autism earlier this year, but the chapter is much more focused on kids and teaching, and brings in a lot more research.

These are academic books, aimed at changing practice; be aware that authors of academic works are often quite happy to send copies to anyone who asks nicely, but if you’re in academia, please recommend them to your library! Learn more about the books here.

Finally (for now) the 22nd of December sees the release of It Takes All Kinds of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving at School, edited by Rachael Davis, Claire O’Neill and Sue Fletcher-Watson. My chapter here is Embracing Monotropism and Flow, co-written with Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms). In some ways, this is an extension and update of my 2019 Monotropism at School/Top Autism Tips for Teachers, but we go into way more depth, and bring in fresh insights and research from the last few years.

There are still two or three more books that I’ve contributed to on the horizon, but they don’t have official release dates yet. All in all, it’s exciting to have had the chance to collaborate with so many fantastic co-authors and editors, and to be part of these things that are all contributing to the huge ongoing shift in the way that people understand autism, and neurodivergence more broadly. I hope I get the chance to work more with every one of them in the future.