Alaina Leary

Halloween can be an autistic person’s worst nightmare with the sensory overload. Yet, I'm autistic and Halloween is my favorite time of year.

Some people would say my bangs make me look younger and I should grow them out, but I disagree. My bangs don’t magically change my appearance, but my forehead feels naked without them.

If you’re looking for a Pride Month reading list, or just want to get more LGBTQ+ books on your radar this year, here are a few worth checking out.

When my mom died, I made a list of things that made me similar to her: My favorite color was purple, I liked to write, I loved reading, I adored cats, I didn’t wear makeup, my favorite soda was Pepsi, I lived in oversized sweaters. I was 11, so I didn’t add “I love to drink” to the list, but it crosses my mind now whenever I’m at a bar with friends, and I decide to order a cocktail.

"Writing about trauma or difficult experiences doesn’t repair that trauma,” said Melanie. “It doesn’t make it go away. But I kept hearing what a transformative thing it was for [the memoirists] to shape these stories into something that they could be proud of.”

My sexual assault is the main reason my girlfriend and I didn’t celebrate the love-infested holiday for the first six years of our relationship. Last Valentine’s Day, a month after we celebrated seven years together, was our first time embracing the holiday as our own.

In the aftermath of my rape, I became an activist for ending rape culture. And I quickly found that even in feminist circles, disability was often left out of the conversation completely.

The best part about Halloween is having free rein to dress a little whimsically and spooky all month long. Let's all dress like every day is Halloween!

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of th

Diverse genre fiction shares a lot in common with diverse literature, in that a lot of the challenges are the same. We still have to ask a lot of questions about who gets to tell what stories, what kinds of books and authors are published, what it means to get it right, and who is on staff at the publishing houses that produce genre fiction.