masking

Cover of the book A Kind of Spark. It has a dark blue background. The profile of a girl with long wavy hair and closed eyes takes up most of the space. She is wearing white ear defenders in an explosion shape with sparks around the edge. Inside that shape is the title of the book A Kind of Spark in yellow to purple vertical gradient colors. Lower on the page between two locks of hair is orange text reading, "Being different doesn't mean your voice doesn't count." Even lower between two more tresses is the name of the author, Elle McNicoll.

Autism in Fiction: Reviewing A Kind of Spark, by Elle McNicoll

Reading A Kind of Spark, I felt a part of myself represented and explained on the page that I’d never seen anywhere else before. I feel so much for Addie, the 12-year-old autistic main character: How she puts herself in the historical stories of witches, and how the injustice of their history upsets her, while others seem detached.

Painting of the Ancient Greek demigod Hercules and the giant Antaeus, c. 1570, Oil on canvas. from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

The Unrecovered

On being angry and frustrated at the celebration at children’s “recovery” from autism, by people who will not actually bear the consequences of losing that diagnosis, for the rest of their lives.

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On Autism and Social Camouflaging: An Interview With Lily Levy

Lily Levy at INSAR 2018 [image: Lily Levy, a white British woman, presenting a poster at an autism conference.] INSAR 2019, the International Meeting For Autism Research, starts in three days. Before we begin our coverage, we’d like to emphasize research and themes from last year’s conference INSAR 2018, in Rotterdam—so we can proceed with a

Photo of end-stage burning match.

An Autistic Burnout

The sad truth is that so many Autistic people, children and adults, go through autistic burnout with zero comprehension of what is happening to them, and with zero support from their friends and families.

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