Coming Out as a Dyslexic Author
After my book was published, I publicly shared by diagnosis
I never kept my dyslexia and dyscalculia diagnoses a secret. They rarely come up because I’ve become so good at masking. As a neglected child, I never received any support at school or in my home and had to learn to adapt. I attended inner-city, minimally funded, and unaccredited schools that graduated students who couldn’t read, so it was easy for me to fall through the cracks. As an adult, I never thought of disclosing my diagnosis until I published my first book, You Don’t Need to Forgive.
People started to view me differently as a published author as if I was suddenly an “actual writer” as opposed to a “hobby writer.” When they found out that I was also dyslexic, they were shocked. This gave me pause. Do people assume that those with dyslectic can’t write a book? This propelled me to write an article for Writer’s Digest to share my experience as a dyslexic author.
Here’s the article.
Mastering Puzzles: How Dyslexia Made Me a Better Writer
In elementary school, I wrote precocious essays inspired by movies and proudly handed them to my teachers. I wrote about why Shoeless Joe Jackson shouldn’t have been banned from baseball (Field of Dreams), why Virgil Earp deserved more credit for his role in the fight at the O.K. Corral, as he was overshadowed by his more famous brother Wyatt (Tombstone), and how sharks, often misunderstood, deserve more respect from humans (Jaws). I received A’s on every essay, but my teachers were confused because my passion for writing didn’t translate into an appreciation for reading.
Throughout my childhood, I despised reading. I didn’t read any assigned books in school and refused to read aloud. In 5th grade, I asked my teacher if I could write a book instead of reading Charlotte’s Web. She agreed, thinking I would learn that writing a book was much more challenging than reading one. She was wrong. I turned in a handwritten book with illustrations about the social structure of a township of spiders living in a woman’s hair. I received an A, but my teacher recommended I meet with the school counselor for testing after noticing I often switched the letters p, q, b, and d. The tests revealed that I was dyslexic, and that’s when my journey of learning to embrace my strengths as a dyslexic writer began.
Read more HERE
Book Reading & Signing in Chicago
Date: 4/12/25
Time: 3pm
Location: The Seminary Co-Op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL
Super impressive, Amanda! 👏🏻