Meg Eden Kuyatt

Crowd of varied people and critters in chibi manga style, in several rows.

On Writing Neurodivergent Characters

I had poured so much of myself into my protagonist. When my agent called my character childish, naive, and vulnerable, I couldn’t help but feel she was calling me childish, naive, and vulnerable.

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.

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