The Clearing by Katherine May Podcast

I’ve been reading Daniel’s writing for a long time - his first book, Born on a Blue Day, came out in 2006. At the time, he was writing about his experience as a savant (his synaesthesia means that he conceptualises numbers and dates in a completely different way to most of us), and it was interesting to talk here about the way that he was treated during those years. Daniel is a beautiful writer, but his talent was often invsible to people who only wanted to see him as a kind of specimen, not fully human. I deeply admire the way he’s persisted, asserting his rightful place as a thinker and a master of prose.

Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum is a very necessary book. A close-up portrait of nine different autistic people, it is at once poetic and illunimating, showing the insight and passion that autistic minds bring to the world. It’s a pleasurable, immersive read, and it does the important work of humanising a group of people who have so often been dehumanised.