Sarah Kurchak is autistic. She hasn’t let that get in the way of pursuing her dream to become a writer, or to find love, but she has let it get in the way of being in the same room with someone chewing food loudly, and of cleaning her bathroom sink. In I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, Kurchak examines the Byzantine steps she took to become “an autistic success story,” how the process almost ruined her life and how she is now trying to recover. Growing up undiagnosed in small-town Ontario in the eighties and nineties, Kurchak realized early that she was somehow different from her peers. She discovered an effective strategy to fend off bullying: she consciously altered nearly everything about herself—from her personality to her body language. She forced herself to wear the denim jeans that felt like being enclosed in a sandpaper iron maiden. Every day, she dragged herself through the door with an elevated pulse and a churning stomach, nearly crumbling under the effort of the performance. By the time she was finally diagnosed with autism at twenty-seven, she struggled with depression and anxiety largely caused by the same strategy she had mastered precisely. She came to wonder, were all those years of intensely pretending to be someone else really worth it? Tackling everything from autism parenting culture to love, sex, alcohol, obsessions and professional pillow fighting, Kurchak’s enlightening memoir challenges stereotypes and preconceptions about autism and considers what might really make the lives of autistic people healthier, happier and more fulfilling.

An autistic writer's memoir of the detrimental effects of pretending to be normal, and her impassioned call to redefine what is considered a successful life.

An urgent, funny, shocking, and impassioned memoir by the winner of the Spectrum Art Prize 2018, How To Be Autistic presents the rarely shown point of view of someone living with autism. Poe's voice is confident, moving and often funny, as she reveals to us a very personal account of autism, mental illness, gender and sexual identity. As we follow Charlotte's journey through school and college, we become as awestruck by her extraordinary passion for life as by the enormous privations that she must undergo to live it. From food and fandom, to body modification and comic conventions, Charlotte's experiences through the torments of schooldays and young adulthood leave us with a riot of conflicting emotions: horror, empathy, despair, laugh-out-loud amusement and, most of all, respect.

A true story that is both uniquely moving and exceptionally inspiring, Emergence is the first-hand account of a courageous autistic woman who beat the odds and cured herself. As a child, Temple Grandin was forced to leave her "normal" school and enroll in a school for autistic children. This searingly honest account captures the isolation and fears suffered by autistics and their families and the quiet strength of one woman who insisted on a miracle.

Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn’t “look” autistic. But, as he’s quick to point out in this memoir, autism “looks” different for just about everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Diagnosed with ASD at age five, McCreary got hit with the performance bug not much later. During a difficult time in junior high, he started journaling, eventually turning his pain e into something empowering—and funny. He scored his first stand-up gig at age 14, and hasn't looked back. This unique and hilarious #OwnVoices memoir breaks down what it’s like to live with autism for readers on and off the spectrum. Candid scenes from McCreary's life are broken up with funny visuals and factual asides. Funny, You Don’t Look Autistic is an invaluable and compelling read for young readers with ASD looking for voices to relate to, as well as for readers hoping to broaden their understanding of ASD.

As a child, Claire's big brother Ray was always bright and inquisitive, and she looked up to him. But as the two became teenagers, Ray struggled to acquire the social skills that came more easily to Claire and their friends. Claire tried to help, pointing out what he should or shouldn't have said or done. Ray insisted that he wasn't the problem--"On my planet...", he would explain, there were no social climbers, no cocktail parties, no subtle hints or subliminal messages to miss. On his planet, the telling of little white lies would be a capital offence. At sixteen, sitting with him in the high school cafeteria, Claire vowed to find Ray's "planet." After graduation, Ray took a job as a letter carrier with Canada Post, but after thirty-three years on the job he had developed plantar fasciitis, his feet so painful he couldn't walk. Instead of seeking medical help, he began leaving mail in his truck overnight--a serious dereliction of duty. He was fired, blew his appeal, and spiralled into a suicidal depression. Claire didn't know he was in trouble until he reached out to her by email. Thus began a remarkable email correspondence that pulled back the curtain on an inner life Claire couldn't have imagined. Where in-person interactions plunged him into hot water, by email, Ray's writing revealed a compassionate, funny, sad man who showed extraordinary insight into his often self-destructive way of navigating the world. Ray was fifty when Claire realized he might have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but by then, having survived without a diagnosis his whole life, Ray was reluctant to have a label pinned on him and resisted Claire's efforts to fix him by trying, in all sincerity, to make him more like her. Dispatches From Ray's Planet draws on Ray and Claire's correspondence to tell the story of two siblings from two very different planets. There are thousands of Rays in our world, hiding in basements or holding up walls at social functions. In this collective memoir, Claire and Ray share their journey with the hope that others can also learn that we all perceive the world in different ways, and that "different" does not necessarily mean dangerous.

A gripping, ultimately triumphant memoir that's also the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of the neuroscience of addiction written for the general public. FROM THE INTRODUCTION: "We are prone to a cycle of craving what we don't have, finding it, using it up or losing it, and then craving it all the more. This cycle is at the root of all addictions, addictions to drugs, sex, love, cigarettes, soap operas, wealth, and wisdom itself. But why should this be so? Why are we desperate for what we don't have, or can't have, often at great cost to what we do have, thereby risking our peace and contentment, our safety, and even our lives?" The answer, says Dr. Marc Lewis, lies in the structure and function of the human brain. Marc Lewis is a distinguished neuroscientist. And, for many years, he was a drug addict himself, dependent on a series of dangerous substances, from LSD to heroin. His narrative moves back and forth between the often dark, compellingly recounted story of his relationship with drugs and a revelatory analysis of what was going on in his brain. He shows how drugs speak to the brain - which is designed to seek rewards and soothe pain - in its own language. He shows in detail the neural mechanics of a variety of powerful drugs and of the onset of addiction, itself a distortion of normal perception. Dr. Lewis freed himself from addiction and ended up studying it. At the age of 30 he traded in his pharmaceutical supplies for the life of a graduate student, eventually becoming a professor of developmental psychology, and then of neuroscience - his field for the last 12 years. This is the story of his journey, seen from the inside out.