Alaina Leary

When I was in seventh grade, I logged onto my MySpace blog and wrote a short blog post about being gay and afraid to come out to my family and frie

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.

Remembering to do things isn’t exactly my strong suit, so I need to actively plan so that my partner isn’t the only one making lists, cleaning the dishes, and checking that our bills are paid on time.

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.

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.

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.

Moving can be a traumatic experience. We often forget how many remnants of the past we hold onto—whether intentionally or accidentally, just because we put a letter away in a drawer and forgot about it.

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.

I’ve walked the line between visibly and invisibly disabled my entire life.

We think of holidays and big moments first when we think about death. What we don’t talk about are the little moments in between, like surviving Autumn.