Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Rogue is one of the rare novels about an autistic character written by an autistic author, and the book raises many intriguing questions to discuss.

The pain of being the butt of someone else’s joke comes back to me whenever I read fiction that depicts characters on the autism spectrum who repeatedly take idioms and other expressions literally, or fail to understand the double meaning of words in embarrassing ways.

When privileged outsiders define us, they often do so out of ignorance, self-interest, or malice, and their versions of ourselves, rather than our own realities, become the norm.

Diversity in children’s literature is often represented as an either/or, without intersectionality; characters can either be autistic or gay, for example, or a wheelchair user or Black, but rarely both. Why is that?

Clichés, ableist language … what kinds of words, phrases, or situations used in book or character descriptions send up warning flags for our contributors?

If our contributors could tell an author writing a character with their disability one thing – besides “do your research” – what would it be?

When I received my diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome seven years ago, I thought of all the young people today who face the social challenges and bullying that I faced decades earlier. I wanted to create a character like me, but one who fights back against the way others treat her in a way that I never did.