Clay Dillon is neuroqueer, and he needs to make peace with it. After thirty years, he finally knows the truth: that he is and always has been autistic, and that most of his problems getting along came from a lack of awareness of himself a lack that came not from being autistic, but from having no knowledge of the gap between what he knew of his own needs and what others expected them to be. This is changing, though, and the change brings a freedom that is at once great and terrible. It grants him answers, but it also alters his ways of perceiving himself. Feelings that were dismissed at puberty are rushing to the forefront of his perceptions, and Clay is beginning to question what his desires are, and even who he is, as his world shifts around him.
"Clay's move from compliance to defiance, from heteronormative and allistic performance to honesty and inner strength, is narrated in clear, stunning, and revelatory language." - N.I. Nicholson, author of Novena (remixed) and Editor-in-Chief of Barking Sycamores
"Michael deftly navigates Clay's exploration of the shifting boundaries of disclosure and his struggles to balance his personal and professional lives, bringing both insight and unflinching honesty to the narrative." - Cynthia Kim, author of I Think I Might Be Autistic and Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappopriate
"For many of us a late-in-life autism diagnosis asks as many questions as it answers. Defiant takes a bare bones approach in speaking to readers from that very angle." - S.R. Salas, author of Black and White: A Colorful Look at Life on the Autism Spectrum
Michael is a trans and autistic writer from West Michigan. Her novels are built around themes of embodiment, plurality, and transition, but they range from surreal family dramas set in the recent past to fantastic speculative imaginings in sci fi and fantasy worlds. From 2011 to 2015, she wrote the Shaping Clay blog, which has been on hiatus since 2016, after which point she wrote for Cyborg Workshop Her novel Defiant was a Lambda Literary nominee in 2016, and she co-edited The Spoon Knife Anthology's initial volume that same year. Currently, Michael is planning to launch a new blog and to begin writing the next Clay Dillon book. While she does this, she also writes with The Puzzlebox Collective, a multimedia, multigenre art collective. Books Michael writes after 2016 will be released under the name Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillon.
