S138.
ATTENTION! Writing with ADHD
Saturday, March 11, 2023
10:35 am to 11:50 am
Based on demographic estimates, more than 600 AWP attendees likely have ADHD. While we may struggle to write around brain-based differences affecting attention, memory, mood, sensory processing, and more, neurodivergence also brings singular gifts—like associative thinking and hyperfocus—that enable deep creative immersion into real and imagined worlds. Here, genre-diverse writers with ADHD share strategies around process and the writing life, along with the unexpected ways it shapes their work.
Participants
Lisa Van Orman Hadley is the author of Irreversible Things, an autobiographical novel in stories, for which she was awarded the Howling Bird Press Fiction Prize, an AML Special Award in Literature, and two Midwest Book Awards silver medals. Her work has appeared in NER, The Collagist, and Epoch.
Patricia Caspers is an award-winning poet, reporter, and columnist. She is the founding editor of West Trestle Review, and her work includes two full-length poetry collections, Some Flawed Magic (Kelsay Books, 2021) and In the Belly of the Albatross (Glass Lyre Press, 2015). She is a UU.
Denise Delgado is a Boston-based writer, artist, and cultural organizer. Her fiction and arts writing have appeared in The Southeast Review, Inch, Hinchas de Poesía, Jai-Alai magazine, the anthology Florida Flash, WBUR’s The ARTery, and many other journals and contemporary art publications.
Daniel Jenkins is a poet living in Northern Virginia. His poetry and reviews have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Cold Mountain Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Cagibi. He is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (poetry, 2018).
Chloe Martinez is a poet and scholar of South Asian religions. The author of the collection Ten Thousands Selves and the chapbook Corner Shrine, she works at Claremont McKenna College, where she is program coordinator at the Center for Writing & Public Discourse and lecturer in religious studies.
