Looking for submissions

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Hi. My name is David Preyde, and I'm an equity studies major at the University of Toronto, focusing on disability studies. I have Asperger's Syndrome and NLD, and I'm working on a book project with my friend Anthony Easton. He also attends the U of T and is on the autism spectrum.

The book we're working on will be a collection of first-person narratives written by people on the autism spectrum, about any facet of their autism they're interested in discussing. The narratives can be anywhere between 250 and 2500 words.

Anthony and I are interested in doing this because while there are a plethora of stories about autism, the majority of them are written by people who aren't personally autistic. Even those who are written by autists- like Look Me In the Eye, by John Elder Robison- are often published due to the connection the author has to a neurotypical, and/or medical professional. We believe there should be an alternative: a book about autism, written by autistics, focusing on a wide variety of different experiences from a group of people from diverse backgrounds (diversity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.).

Would anyone be interested in participating? If you have questions, feel free to post them here or PM me. If you want to participate, PM me and I'll send you my e-mail address so we can discuss it further.

I'll particiate, especially if I can send my contribution in the form of poetry, as I'm a poet.

I can write, and I'm willing to try.

Excellent. Thanks to both of you. I'll send PMs with my contact information.

You said: Even those who are written by autists- like Look Me In the Eye, by John Elder Robison- are often published due to the connection the author has to a neurotypical, and/or medical professional.

Who do you believe my NT or medical connection to be?

My book was published because people in the publishing community thought it was readable and marketable. That's pretty much it. If you write a book and submit it to publishers it must meet that criteria. The fact that the publishing people who read it are NT or not is irrelevant; it's their judgement about your work's marketability that matters.

The medical community had no involvement in publishing my work. It's true that medical people read what I write but they do not facilitate it except by providing an audience for the publisher.

You say you want to publish a collection of stories . . . the problem, in general, with anthologies like that is that it's hard to keep them coherent, and writing styles vary. Very few anthologies or collections ever find commercial success. If you really want to be published my advice would be to write a compelling story, all by itself. Collections of ten or twenty stories from different authors seldom go anywhere.

Write your story, or research and then write about the lives of others. That's got a much greater chance of success than packaging a bunch of other people's words.

I will Particapate I will think of something to write write it and send it you you in a day or two I think I might write about having my autism service dog.

Mr. Robison, it's great to hear from you. I loved your book. My intention was not to criticize you. I believe it's important that when creating a body of literature within a community that individual works react to and communicate with each other. That's how a body of literature grows, develops, and changes, and helps the community evolve and bond over time.

This project is designed as a reaction to the non-fiction written up to this point about autism. Hopefully when it's published others will react to it through writing and the process will continue.

Your brother wrote in the foreword to your book that your book started as a response to him urging you to write about your father's death. Augusten posted your essay on his website, it became popular amongst his readers- he is a literary celebrity- and Augusten then encouraged you to write the rest of the book. You have absolutely no ties to the medical profession, and I apologize if I inadvertently suggested this. But your book did start as the result of your famous neurotypical brother's actions.

In the interest of full disclosure, it was a neurotypical freelance journalist named Kim Pittaway who initially suggested this project to me. My friend Anthony and I are in full editorial control, but I have grappled with feelings of doubt as to whether what we're doing is adequately distanced from what we're reacting to. However, nobody's going to read this book because of Pittaway's marginal association with it, and we're enabling a wide variety of people to voice their experiences. They may not have otherwise had the opportunity. This has helped to quell my doubts.

In addition to this project, I have a batch of short stories I'm trying to publish, a novel I'm working on, two or three children's books I'm trying to publish, and a book about Toronto's subway stations (frightfully esoteric, but that's Asperger's for you). In addition to these works, I am indeed packaging other people's narratives and publishing them in a book. I know that it's not going to make any money. That's not my goal here. I have other projects in the pipeline that will pay the bills. I know it's a horrible cliche, but if the finished book helps one person feel better about themselves, I will count the endeavour as a success.

I think it's so important for our community to interact with each other, because isolation is the biggest problem we have to face. I believe that literature has the power to spark a dialogue that will help bond Aspergians together. That's what I'm trying to do. That's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

You're probably right that the people's work in this book won't be cohesive, that it'll be choppy and messy and incongruous. But that's autism. Hell, that's life.

Thank you for expressing your concerns. Your book meant a lot to me and my family.

some of this is:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheTheor ... llectivism

e.g. "In this life we are lost like one who has gone into the far corner of the garage to look for something, & the light then gets turned off; & we have to fight our way back out through collision with half-remembered forms. More annoying than wounding, yet it is more painful still to contemplate the futility of wishing for a space that contains straight lines."

"Headline: 'Blind Sailor Challenges the Ocean.' The story of my life."

"Not only do i realize i'm just a character in a Dostoevsky novel, i even know what sort. I'm the one who goes mad so he can spend 2 chapters arguing theology with the hero."

...most of it's about other things.

m.

i've started a blog here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... &jid=13661

(more directly personal)

PM me, and I would be happy to discuss what I would be able to write.