Elizabeth was unschooled growing up and largely raised by books. She is currently editing an anthology with contributions by adult-diagnosed autistic people, and writing speculative fiction about Jewish magic and folklore and about extra-neurodiverse fictional cultures. She does disability advocacy on Twitter, where she co-mods the #autchat and #autismmeans hashtag events.
A thorough overview of common autism tropes that mirror and reinforce real-life stereotypes, with links to news stories, research, book reviews or commentary, and blog posts describing relevant real-world experiences.
Here is a key insight to creating realistic autistic characters: We do not do the visibly autistic things we do because of “autism,” full stop. Like non-autistic people, we are responding to our experiences of the world. Those experiences simply differ from those of non-autistic people.
This book portrays its autistic protagonist in ways that will give readers negative, incorrect, and in some cases abusive ideas about autistic people.