Interview with Hao C. Tran

How has the experience been so far of having a book in the world?

It’s a sense of relief that I have finally achieved a dream that one day I would write a book about Vietnam to honor my mother and my homeland. I have known for years that I wanted to do that and it finally happened. It’s like sending a gift to those I know and also don’t know, and maybe for years to come. 

What got you engaged with Autonomous Press?

I am thankful to Nick Walker, Chief Editor of Autonomous Press and Aikido Sensei of the Aiki Arts Dojo in Berkeley, who offered to publish this book after another Press I was working with went bankrupt.

Have you reconnected with any of the people that we meet in your book since it came out?

The book is a collection of short stories about people and the defining moments in my life. Since I started writing about them, I have reconnected with Titus Peachy, a Mennonite who taught me English in Saigon back in 1973. We reconnected about 4 years ago when I set out to look for him and found him through the Internet. Although we don’t see each other much, Binh and I remain life-long friends. I see Dr. Ni every time I return to Vietnam and we travel together to see the progress he has made in poor villages.  Of course, I have written about family members and they are closer to me than ever before.

What advice would you offer to new writers, or experienced writers looking to get started with memoir?

I didn’t start out writing a book like this. Trained as a career scientist and manager, I didn’t know much about creative writing and it is a totally different way to communicate. I am still a novice writer as this is my first book.  From my experience, I’d say take some classes, surround yourself with other writers who give you honest and helpful feedback, and employ good editors. Nothing beats fresh eyes. Write from the heart and make the reader care.

Are there more stories you would like to share in a future project?

Yes, I am thinking of a second book, a sequel if you will. In Skinny Woman in a Straw Hat, the theme is about a Viet Kieu returning home and finding himself between the two worlds, not belonging totally to either. In the next book, perhaps I will explore the life of a Viet Kieu with current challenges and issues here in America. 

Has the process of getting this book into the hands of readers changed you? 

Yes.  I am humbled by the amount of work it takes to write and get a book published. Further, it is a challenge to get the book widely recognized and I am still working on it. So far, I am pleased with the positive response from the readers. Often, the audience are people who have lived through the Vietnam “era” and have experienced the war from different perspectives. Sometimes, the reception comes from people who don’t know much about Vietnam and love to explore other cultures. However, the most rewarding feedback to me comes from the next generation of Vietnamese Americans. They want to know more about their refugee parents who have focused on survival and don’t want to look back and talk about their own harrowing journeys.

Call for Submissions: Spoon Knife 9

Autonomous Press is now accepting submissions of short fiction, short literary memoir, and poetry for the ninth volume of Spoon Knife, our annual genre-bending lit anthology.

Timeline

The deadline for submissions is July 31st, 2024.

Contributors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by the end of 2024.

Spoon Knife 9 will be published in Spring 2025.

Theme

In celebration of the ninth year of Spoon Knife, the theme for Spoon Knife 9 is Numbers – stories in which numbers or counting or our relationship to numbers matter in some way.

Is there safety in numbers?

Are we defined by numbers? In what ways do your measurements, your IQ, your BMI, your credit score matter? Can your existence be encoded as data?  Why do we measure what we measure, and how are these quantifiers used as a means of societal control?

Or think of the Old Testament book of Numbers, concerned with census taking. Who counts and who doesn’t count?

Numbers as friends or enemies, stories of dyscalculia or math savants; stories about rounding errors, countdowns, numerology; lucky or unlucky numbers; stories about lotteries or elections are all fair game.

Numbers can be rational and irrational, as can the contributions to Spoon Knife 9: Numbers. Authors are encouraged to interpret the theme broadly, twisting and queering as needed.

Format

All submissions must be sent as Word documents (.doc or .docx files).

Prose submissions (fiction and memoir) must meet the following criteria:

  • 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced.
  • First line of each paragraph indented.
  • No extra whitespace between paragraphs.
  • Consistent use of Oxford commas.
  • Thoroughly proofread and spell-checked.

If submitting poetry, you may send up to 3 poems (please put them all in a single document). Poems should also be in 12-point Times New Roman font, but do not need to be double-spaced.

Maximum length for submissions is 10k words. Exception: You can assume this limit to be as flexible as you need it to be if you’re an author whom we’ve previously published or whose submission the editors have actively solicited.

Process

Email all submissions to sean [at] autpress [dot] com. The title of your email should be your name plus the words “Spoon Knife 9 Submission.” The body of your email must include a 1–4 sentence bio written in the third person, with the exact name under which you wish to be credited, no more than 150 words in length.

Our process, on acceptance, includes a close copy-edit, and we’ll check in with authors if it looks like there should be any change beyond basic typo fixes; we don’t send author proofs.

Spoon Knife 9 will be co-edited by J.S. Allen and B. Martin Allen.

Payment

Payment for accepted submissions will be $20 plus 1 cent per word, sent near the time of the book’s release.

Spoon Knife 7 and Tinfoil Hats Ready for Pre-Order

We are delighted to share two new books: Spoon Knife 7 – Transitions and Tinfoil Hats. These anthologies are designed to show beautiful new ways of living outside of social norms. When we imagine freely and make bold choices, amazing paths open up. You can order on our website, and the paperbacks will ship in April 2023.

Please stay tuned for Spoon Knife 8 – Smoke and Mirrors. Submissions are open through July 2023, with publication in Spring 2024.

 

Call for Submissions: Spoon Knife 8

Submissions for Spoon Knife 8 are now closed, unless you’re a contributor to previous volumes and have a prior agreement with an editor regarding a late submission.

Submissions are open for Spoon Knife 9. See the Spoon Knife 9 Call for Submissions here.

Autonomous Press is now accepting submissions of short fiction, short literary memoir, and poetry for the eighth volume of Spoon Knife, our annual genre-bending lit anthology.

We are accepting submissions until July 31st, 2023.

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by the end of 2023.

Spoon Knife 8 will be published in Spring 2024.

The theme for Spoon Knife 8 is Smoke & Mirrors. All submissions should touch in some way or another on this theme, but it can be interpreted as broadly and strangely as you like, and as literally or figuratively as you like (i.e., actual smoke and actual mirrors need not appear).

Please note that above all else, Spoon Knife is an anthology of stories, which we select primarily based on the quality of the storytelling. Many would-be contributors, in past years, have been unclear on the nature of Spoon Knife and have wasted their time sending us pieces that read more like blog posts or political activism. We highly recommend reading a recent volume of Spoon Knife in order to make sure you understand what this series is and what it isn’t.

All submissions must be sent as Word documents (.doc or .docx files).

Prose submissions (fiction and memoir) must meet the following criteria:

  • 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced.
  • First line of each paragraph indented.
  • No extra whitespace between paragraphs.
  • Consistent use of Oxford commas.
  • Thoroughly proofread and spell-checked.

If you’re submitting poetry, you may send up to 3 poems (please put them all in a single document). Poems should also be in 12-point Times New Roman font, but do not need to be double-spaced.

Maximum length for submissions is 10k words. Exception: you can assume this limit to be as flexible as you need it to be if you’re an author whom we’ve previously published or whose submission the editors have actively solicited.

Payment for accepted submissions will be $20 plus 1 cent per word, sent near the time of the book’s release. Our process, on acceptance, includes a close copy-edit, and we’ll check in with authors if it looks like there should be any change beyond basic typo fixes; we don’t send author proofs.

Spoon Knife 8 will be co-edited by Nick Walker and Phil Smith.

Email all submissions to nick [at] autpress [dot] com. The title of your email should be your name plus the words “Spoon Knife 8 Submission.” The body of your email must include a 1–4 sentence bio written in the third person, with the exact name under which you wish to be credited; this is the bio we’ll use for you in the book.

 

A Mad, Mad World / Interview with Dr. Phil Smith

  • How did you get involved with AutPress?

a number of years ago, wandering around the inter-webs looking for new and interesting ideas about neurodiversity, while teaching at a university, i discovered some blogs written by people who became founding members of the Autonomous Press collective. i was smitten with their ideas, which approached neurodiversity and neurodivergence and queering in ways i hadn’t seen before. i started sharing those ideas with my students and colleagues. i also realized that this way of thinking saw neurodiversity as a big tent – that it included Madness. as i began to claim Mad identity for myself, i began also to see how i fit within that bigger, broader neurodivergent community. 

when I began seeing the first books that AutPress put out at conferences and elsewhere, i was really excited – here were people that thought like me, had ideas and experiences that were jammin’ and exciting, and wrote for the kind of diverse and wild audiences i hoped to reach. one of the original editors at Autonomous Press reached out to me and asked if i thought i had a book in me that might be of interest to AP. i thought some, and read some, and wrote some, and the result was Writhing writing: Moving toward a mad poetics, which AP went ahead and published in 2018. it was a somewhat complicated project getting it into print, because my writing style is sometimes a bit, uh, unusual. AP went above and beyond putting it into a format that matched my vision, and put awesome cover art done by a wonderful writer, artist, and former student, Dr. Jacquie St. Antoine, on the front. i was pretty much stunned when it received the 2020 American Education Studies Association Critics Choice Award in 2020 – i never expected anything like that kind of recognition.

perhaps two years ago or so, Nick Walker, managing editor for Autonomous Press, put out a call to folx, asking if there were people who might be interested in doing some work for AutPress, perhaps eventually joining the collective. because of my interest in the broader communities AP reaches and touches, my experiences as a writer and editor, and the generosity that AP had offered me as a writer, it felt pretty natural to offer up my time and effort – to give something back to folx who had given something to me. AP collective members were gracious in welcoming me, helped me understand some of the processes and history of the press, and continue to mentor me about – well, all kinds of things. it’s been an exciting process of learning and doing and being (do-be-do-be-do).

  • We are looking forward to the Mad Studies books, both the anthology and the collection of personal stories. Can you tell us what prompted you to begin these projects, and what you are hoping to accomplish with them?

Writhing writing has always been the beginning, for me, of a trajectory of work looking at Mad life, knowledge, and experience, growing out of my increasing awareness and understanding of my own Mad identity and life. it reflects my own growth of understanding of Disabled and Mad people in the world, along with my own life as a Mad academic, poet, and writer. i’d been presenting and writing bits and pieces, here and there, about Madness, and listening and reading the work of other Mad writers and thinkers. i began to realize that the broader life knowledge of Mad people had long been left out of psy-complex understandings of the world, and wanted to add to the growing body of work that shared Mad knowledge and life-experience. i knew that the first place to start would be by asking Mad people to share what it was like to live in a world dominated by saneist and ableist ideologies and approaches to Madness and so-called “mental health” (a term i generally reject). 

much of the ani-psychiatry movement work that i saw going on around me, even to the current time, while doing important things to critique the psy-complex, still didn’t go far enough, to my mind, in bringing forward the work of Mad people in and outside the ivory tower. so i put out calls to the broad Mad community to share two kinds of stories: one about their own lives in the world, and the other about how they see Mad Studies taking a place alongside Disability Studies and other social justice approaches to exploring and being in the world. what would those stories look like/sound like/read like? how would they be different from the kind of stories about Mad people that we usually see or read about from the dominant, normative culture?

the proposals i’ve received back are – amazing. they, and the writing that is starting to come in, is everything i’d hoped for – different words, different knowledge, different ways of looking at the wider wurd whirled. the writing, and the people behind that writing, are hilarious, vulnerable, insightful, poetic, horrifying, glorious explorations of the kinds of lives Mad people experience every single day. i think these two projects will put Autonomous Press even more at the forefront of broadening the already big tent of neurodiverse, queered thinking and writing than it already has been.

  • What is a typical day for you?

well, first, there is no typical day. i live in a cabin beside Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, far off the beaten path – like, literally. my mailbox and the nearest paved road is a half mile away. the closest place that is plowed in the winter is a quarter of a mile away, up a pretty steep hill that most people find a little scary. so my days often involve a fair amount of what colleagues call “bread labor” – doing the work needed to keep mind and body together. i heat mostly with wood, so that takes a bunch of time to cut, split, stack, haul, and burn. getting supplies up and down the hill is not small project, especially in the winter, and given that i have to drive an hour and a half each way to get to the decent size city i go to for food and provisions.

mornings are spent, in large part, reading and writing and editing. i’m fortunate to have pretty decent internet access, so i’m able to communicate with friends and colleagues around the world on the projects we work on together. as long as the power doesn’t go out (we had a big storm before thanksgiving a couple of years ago that knocked electricity out for eight days, and left my path up the hill clogged with trees under a heavy load of ice until spring), i’m able to keep up with the writing and learning that are important to my way of being. afternoons i spend taking care of firewood, working in the garden, harvesting fruit – all of the things needed to keep my small homestead going.

it’s a fair amount of work – and I love every minute of it.

  • What sparks joy in your life?

i feel so privileged to be able to live the life that i do. looking out from my cabin porch is a bay on the largest body of freshwater in the world by surface area in the world. it has the best sunsets on this or any planet, and its moods and beauty changes with every moment. when a gale is blowing, with twenty or thirty foot waves crashing against the shore, and the snow blowing sideways so it can’t even land on the ground, sitting inside by the woodstove is such an incredible experience.

i see very few humans unless i go to town (and then only to talk to the folx at the post office or the grocery store or hardware store or the guy who fixes my chainsaw). but the neighbors – animal people of all kinds – are the most amazing people i’ve met. the turkey hens bring their bunch of poults down to the field for me to admire parading around the field. fawns bound through the grass – once, one lay down in the grass right in front of me, and i reached out to touch it. ravens nest nearby – earlier this summer, one flew from the tree they were nesting in, flying directly to me, hovering overhead, to see if i was a threat. i told them that i was the same guy that had been here last summer, and they turned and flew back to their nest. pileated woodpeckers, porcupines, bald eagles, chicadees, hummingbirds, nuthatches, garter snakes, a big ole hoppy toad that lives underneath my rhubarb leaves – these people check on me daily, and i on them.

being outside in all weather, amongst the tree people and lupine people and black-eyed susan people, water people and rock people – picking blueberries that will end up in my pancakes, writing about my life, reading and learning, spending time doing real physical work that will have a direct impact on whether i’ll be warm enough that night – i’ve been so lucky to build a life that keeps me safe and whole. yes, i experience Madness every day, but my daily habits and chores and delights of weather and sky and animals and water – these give me so much – i’m not even sure i can put it adequately into words. it suits me.

Call for Submissions: Spoon Knife 7

Submissions for Spoon Knife 7 are closed as of June 30th, 2022.

As of July 1, 2022, we are accepting submissions for Spoon Knife 8. The Spoon Knife 8 Call for Submissions is here.

Authors who have submitted pieces to Spoon Knife 7 will be notified of acceptance or rejection by the end of 2022.

Spoon Knife 7 will be published in Spring 2023.

The theme for Spoon Knife 7 is transitions. All submissions should deal in some way or another with this theme, interpreted however you choose: transitions from one way of being to another, one stage of life to another, one perspective to another, one world to another…

Preference will be given to submissions that are in some way flavored with queerness and/or neuroqueerness. These elements need not be central or explicit––we’ll consider submissions in which queerness and/or neuroqueerness are explicit themes; we’ll just as happily consider submissions in which queerness or neuroqueerness don’t show up directly at all, but subtly inform the author’s voice or aesthetic.

All submissions must be sent as Word documents (.doc or .docx files). Prose submissions (fiction and memoir) must meet the following criteria:

  • 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced.
  • First line of each paragraph indented.
  • No extra whitespace between paragraphs.
  • Consistent use of Oxford commas.
  • Thoroughly proofread and spell-checked.

If you’re submitting poetry, you may send up to 5 poems (please put them all in a single document). Poems should also be in 12-point Times New Roman font, but do not need to be double-spaced.

Maximum length for submissions is 10k words. Exception: you can assume this limit to be as flexible as you need it to be if you’re an author whom we’ve previously published or whose submission the editors have actively solicited.

Payment for accepted submissions will be 1 cent per word, to be sent by check near the time of the book’s release.

Spoon Knife 7 will be co-edited by Nick Walker and Mike Jung.

Call for Submissions: Mad Studies Stories and Theory

Autonomous Press seeks submissions of abstracts for two upcoming anthologies, Tinfoil Hats: Stories by Mad People in an Insane World and A Mad Turn: Anti-methods of Mad Studies.
The Basics
Autonomous Press seeks submissions of abstracts for two upcoming anthologies, Tinfoil Hats: Stories by Mad People in an Insane World and A Mad Turn: Anti-methods of Mad Studies.
We’re looking for abstracts of 500 words or less, with short accompanying author bios of 150 words or less (written in the third person), for each anthology. Deadline for abstract submissions is October 31, 2020. Selected authors will be notified by November 31, 2020, with final submissions by March 1, 2021 for Tinfoil Hats and July 1, 2021 for A Mad Turn.
What We’re Looking For
Tinfoil Hats will include stories by neurodivergent people who identify as being Mad, about living Mad in a saneist world. We see these stories as intensely personal – or as intensely as can be done when the intensity can be difficult to write or talk about. They may include stories about incidents and experiences that might seem intensely shameful, horrifying, scary, or hard. We look for narratives about what it looks/feels/sounds/smells like to be Mad, and experiences of interacting with those who stigmatize/psychiatrize/traumatize Mad people.
A Mad Turn will envision Mad Studies as a field, and and what it means to “do” Mad Studies. It will explore and think through what Mad Studies might bring to academia, education, culture, and other social institutions. It will be a place to talk about what Mad Studies offers Mad people and Mad activists. A Mad Turn will explore intersections with anarchism, disability justice, Mad justice, as well as gender and queer and race studies. Writing will generally be plainly spoken, working to step away from jargon, while understanding that there are things that need to be/can only be said with complex language, and working to explain that complexity.
Format and Length
For each book (authors are invited to submit pieces for one or the other or both), we’re looking for 10,000 words or less of fully-polished prose, submitted in standard manuscript format (title page with contact info, double-spaced Times New Roman 12-point font, pages numbered with either title or author’s name in the header). All submissions must be in a Word-compatible format (.doc, .docx) – no other file formats will be accepted. Writing may be poetic, in the form of memoir, or other alternative means of written expression.
How to Submit an Abstract
Email all abstracts to phil@autpress.com
When submitting your abstract, please put in the subject line one of the following:
“A Mad Turn Submission”
“Tinfoil Hat Submission”
Please send only one submission for each anthology, and only put one submission in each email.
Please include a cover letter that clearly specifies the name under which you want to be credited in the body of the email.
Abstracts (as well as final submissions) must meet the following criteria:
  • Double-space all text.
  • Indent the first line of each paragraph, and do not put extra whitespace between paragraphs.
  • Make the first page a cover page with title and author contact info.
  • Number all pages.
  • Use Oxford commas consistently.
  • Thoroughly spell-checked and proofread (we recommend it be reviewed multiple times, by the author and by at least two other readers who have a sharp critical eye for detail, punctuation, grammar, and clarity of writing).
The Editor
Phil Smith is a recovering Professor of Special Education. He identifies as Mad (as hell) and Disabled, and also works as Development Editor at Autonomous Press. He’s published widely, including Writhing Writing: Moving Towards a Mad Poetics (2018, published by Autonomous Press). A poet, playwright, novelist, and visual artist, he’s an activist, and served on boards of directors of national and state organizations, including President of the Society of Disability Studies. He lives in a cabin beside Lake Superior, where he makes maple syrup, heats with wood, and yells at chipmunks.

Interview with Dr. Phil Smith

It was a pleasure for Azzia Walker to connect with Dr. Phil Smith, author of Writhing Writing: Moving Towards a Mad Poetics and our newest collective member.

“I’ve been reading since – really, I can’t remember NOT reading. I can’t imagine not having a book to hand; I’m literally always in the middle of one. Or two. Or three or four. I prefer real paper books, and hardcover, but failing that, anything in print will do. At school, I remember disliking recess, because it meant I had to do something other than read – I have a vivid memory of sitting against a baseball diamond fence backstop, in the sun, reading a book. Books make sense to me, in ways that people often don’t.

“I’ve been reading science fiction since my early teens. I’ve diversified since then – mysteries, all kinds of non-fiction – but science fiction is still pretty central to my existence.

“I wrote my first poetry when I was 14, for an assignment in English class. I didn’t think much of it, but my teacher did, and said so. It was awful stuff, really, but I haven’t stopped messing about with words on paper and screen since. The juxtaposition of words and sounds is something that resonates and excites my being – when I’m in the zone, I’m at my happiest. Much of the writing that I think is my best is stuff that I just let flow – it requires no effort, no intent. It just comes. I literally sit in front of my computer for hours, making words happen, and the time feels like it doesn’t pass at all. I think that writing is literally the only thing I’m truly good at. There are many things that I enjoy – but writing is the one thing I make that is really worth doing.

“I wanted to be part of AutPress because I’ve believed in its mission, work, and the people behind it almost since it began. The writing that I’ve seen come out of it – the thinking and being that folx have created – is truly the kind of work that I want to support and help create. It’s among the most powerful, profound, and life-affirming work that I know of.

“I’ve always got writing and reading projects floating around in my head. I’ve had in mind a text exploring the meaing of Madness, and what Mad Studies might look like, for awhile. There are a couple of books of poetry that I’m working on, as well as a couple of books of photographs that need to be finished. For AutPress, I have in mind two books at the moment – one an edited collection of stories by Mad people, exploring their life experience. The other is an edited work looking at Mad Studies as folx are currently thinking about. I’ll be going to several conferences this spring, and hope to talk to people I meet about AutPress, and explore with them what kind of writing they’re working on or thinking about that might fit with what AutPress does.

“I’m at my happiest when I’m exploring the edges of what seems possible, or likely, or reasonable. Adventures of the mind and body are what I live for. Meeting new people, exploring new landscapes, creating beauty and joy – these are incredibly important in my life. Folx reading this should feel free to get in touch about what excites them, and to explore with me the boundaries of queer, neurodivergent life and being.”

Stay tuned for Spoon Knife 5 coming out in fall 2020, and you can join the email list to become notified of new publications.

Call for Submissions – Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop

The Basics

Autonomous Press seeks submissions of poetry, short fiction, and short memoir
pieces for an upcoming anthology, Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop.

Scheduled for publication in Spring 2022, this sixth volume of the Spoon Knife Anthology series continues to bring some of the best short format works by both established and new writers with a focus on queer, neurodivergent, and disabled voices.

Deadline for submissions is Thursday, December 31, 2020.

What We’re Looking For

Original work exploring the theme of Rest Stop. A product of mid twentieth century car culture and the US interstate highway system, a rest stop can be clean and welcoming. Or it might be filthy and frightening. Because you never know until you enter, the rest stop is a respite of last resort.

Think transitional spaces/times/experiences.
The space between where you are and where you will be.
Times in which the present has a self awareness of impermanence.
If desired, season with dirt and compromise, and garnish with implications of seediness.

The Editors

B. Allen is a memoirist who serves as CFO and Development Editor for Autonomous Press. Since the 1980’s, in venues ranging from indie weeklies to the Huffington Post, Allen has been writing highly personal stories of disability’s intersection with poverty, feminism, queer culture, and abuse.

J. S. Allen, PhD, is a neurodivergent writer of imaginary stories. By day he is a data scientist who dons pants as necessary and uses the power of statistics to make the world suck less for children in his community. By night the pants are gone and Dr. Allen is in front of his computer composing his life’s work, a sweeping fantasy epic called The Waters of Life and Death.

Format and Length

Fiction and Memoir: We’re looking 10,000 words or less of fully-polished prose, submitted in standard manuscript format (title page with contact info, double-spaced Times New Roman 12-point font, pages numbered with either title or author’s name in the header.)

Poetry: You may submit pieces of any length and style, provided they fit the theme of this collection.

Please submit no more than three pieces total.

All submissions must be in a Word-compatible format (.doc, .docx, .odt).

When and How to Submit

The submission deadline is Thursday December 31, 2020.

Authors will be notified of their acceptance or rejection by Sunday, February 28, 2021.

Payment for accepted submissions will be 1 cent per word, to be sent by check or PayPal during the second quarter of 2021.
Email all submissions to info@autpress.com.

When submitting your work, please put in the subject line one of the following:

“Spoon Knife 6 Submission – Fiction”
“Spoon Knife 6 Submission – Memoir”
“Spoon Knife 6 Submission – Poetry”

Please include a cover letter that clearly specifies the name under which you want to be credited, along with a 3-4 sentence bio of no more than 150 words written in the third person. The name and bio should be typed exactly as you want them to appear in the book.

Previous Anthologies in this Series

Q&A with Ada Hoffmann

We’re continuing the interview process with our awesome authors. Azzia Walker, our operations manager, got to know Ada Hoffmann, author of Monsters in My Mind and The Outside, which is coming in June 2019 from Angry Robot Books.

Q. What got you started with MONSTERS IN MY MIND?

A. I started publishing short fiction in 2010, and by 2015-ish I had an amount of it out there that I felt was a book’s worth. I always loved the idea of having a short fiction collection of my own, so I started experimenting with themes that could tie together big chunks of my work and with different ways of arranging the stories and poems.

When Dani Alexis Ryskamp beta read the manuscript for my novel THE OUTSIDE, she offered to publish it. I wanted (and, eventually, got) an agent and a bigger press for the novel, but I had been playing with the collection idea for a while at that point and had been struggling with where to send it, so I asked if we could do that instead. I liked the idea of publishing MONSTERS with a group of neurodivergent publishers who “got” my work.

I actually changed the entire story order for the NeuroQueer Books imprint. I asked myself: how did the stories and poems engage with the idea, literal or metaphorical or subtextual, of being neuroqueer? I knew what stories I wanted to start and end with, and between them I was able to order the works in a way that charted a satisfying path between different ways of engaging with that concept, like a meta-plot.

Q. Was there anything that surprised you about the stories or the characters as you got further in?

A. Not a lot – most of the stories were already polished and published before I assembled them. Even the new ones had already been through beta reading and revisions.

The surprises were mostly to do with how well the stories fitted together. I was surprised how much of my work I could fit into the structure I’d come up with, even if it had nothing to do with neurodiversity at first glance. It also surprised me which stories I ended up dropping. I had a couple of published stories that I think are great stories, and that even engage with neurodiversity and mental illness themes more directly than some of what made it in. But they didn’t fit the meta-plot – they contradicted what I felt like the meta-plot was overall trying to say. So I left them out. Maybe in a future collection!

Q. What do you want people to come away with after experiencing your work?

A. I hope people feel a sense of wonder. I want them to feel that they experienced some image or idea that was new to them, that their mind expanded a little bit, or that they’ve seen something from a different perspective. I also want them to be able to engage their emotions and have fun!

Q. What’s next for you?

My debut novel, THE OUTSIDE, is coming out in June from Angry Robot Books. It’s a space opera with elements of cosmic horror, featuring an #ownvoices autistic protagonist and other diverse, non-neurotypical characters. It’s also a queer book – the protagonist is a lesbian and her supportive girlfriend is a major character. There are very few straight characters, actually. I’m watching the buzz build and I’m VERY excited.

I’ve been struggling with burnout after finishing my PhD thesis, so I haven’t written as much new work as I’d like, but short fiction and poetry will always be there in some form. I have lots of ideas for THE OUTSIDE’s potential sequel, though it won’t be greenlit until we see how the first book does, and I have the beginnings of an unrelated novel involving dragons.

I also am continuing my Autistic Book Party project, a long-running review series that talks in depth about representations of autism in speculative fiction. Autistic Book Party is funded through Patreon; the reviews are free for everyone, but backers help choose which books are reviewed, along with some other goodies. If that’s of interest, you can check it out at https://www.patreon.com/ada_hoffmann.