Yes, that’s me. I edited an anthology of work by Autistic people for my employer, Faraway, and now it’s ready for sale. We received funding through the Amazon Literary Partnership, and worked with Matthew’s Hub over in Hull to run creative writing groups.
Here are the details:Link:
ISBN: 9781914313073
Blurb: This anthology contains stories, poems and art by neurodivergent creatives and explores the diversity of the human mind and how art is made even more beautiful by the inclusion of voices often left unheard. The power of Autism is not one of ‘blacks and whites’, but a full spectrum of experiences that you may have yet to encounter.
The book is available as a paperback, it is currently available for pre-order with 20th July being publication day.
I have a sci-fi story in there. There are poems and art. There is a piece of memoir and several fantasy stories. I got to read a wide variety of work to as part of my editing process, and the choices were difficult to make. I decided any work by Faraway members would go in automatically, to encourage them to keep writing their stories and poetry, and creating their art.
Plus, they’re really enjoyable works.
There were one or two stories that I had to do a lot of editing on, mainly spelling and grammar. Autistic people can have idiosyncratic approaches to words and sentence structure, and I’ve tried to keep those idiosyncrasies where they make sense. Sometimes I’ve had to correct a systematic misunderstanding of sentence structure that detracts from the work but otherwise not changed anything.
I have a lot of respect for professional editors!
We’re planning to send copies to contributors and sell some copies from our office, so people in the area can buy a copy direct from Faraway. The funds raised will be used to support our work supporting Autistic adults. I’m hoping we make enough for me to restart our creative writing group.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 