Hello all,

Today is World Autism Awareness Day (part of Autism Awareness Week), and we have a little announcement.

Sadly Aisja Mahmood will no longer be able to write for Stim due to personal circumstances, but I’m pleased to say we have a new writer joining us *drumroll*

Please welcome Agri! Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author, based in Sweden. His work has appeared in The White Review, Asymptote and Guernica. He was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, was a runner-up for the 2017 Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and his piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction.

And so, here is the full line up. The manuscript is being worked on as we speak, and I can tell you that it is going to be a truly interesting book, showing a range of autistic creativity, lives, and experiences. 

It's been quiet on this end as we're all heads-down working on the book, so hopefully I will be back with more news for you shortly.

In the meantime, please take the time this week to look up some writing or art by autistic people, and share it with someone. If you backed this book, you probably know its origins come from the frustrations of seeing art and media about us not by us, and the best thing you can do to understand us is explore our creativity. The people in the lineup are a great place to start -- you'll find most of them on Twitter, tagged in this mega-thread. Keep up that habit, make yourself a list of books or blogs to work through, get to know us. Learn from us. What we need is acceptance rather than awareness, but this is a good place to start.

All the best,

Lizzie