I’m looking for two personal essays by Irish autistic teenagers aged between 15-18 years for an upcoming anthology for teenage readers. The essay can be on anything do with autism, or how being autistic affects your life or something in your life.

Personal essays are written in the first person (i.e from your own perspective), and they are about your own experience. However, I invite you to have have creative freedom in how you write and format the essay- you can include a poem, bullet points, comic strips or whatever you want!

If you are unable to type (for example if you have co-occurring apraxia), feel free to get in touch about alternative methods to write the essay with my assistance. AAC Users and non-speakers are just as welcome to submit as anyone else, and I will provide any accommodations that are reasonable within my workload.

For any questions, contact me at irishautisticanthology@gmail.com

Deadline: 6th April 2026

About the anthology

The anthology will be published in 2027 by two Irish publishers working together; Little Island and New Island.

The majority of the essays will be written by autistic Irish adults, but we also want to include two teenage voices.

If your essay gets chosen

If your essay gets chosen, you may be asked to make some edits to your piece. This is standard practice in all books, and even the most experienced of writers will be asked to make edits to ensure a high standard of writing within the book.

The essay, along with your name, and a short few sentences about you (this is called your Biography) will appear in the book.

If your essay does not get chosen

When editing an anthology, I am looking at the book as a whole thing, so all the essays need to work well together. This makes choosing which essays to include really hard, as there might be lots of excellent essays, but I need to chose the ones that work best together. I need to avoid too much repetition of themes and concepts, and I need to try to ensure readers will stay hooked to the book from start to finish i.e that one essays flows nicely into the next.

If your essay does not get chosen, it does not mean it is a bad essay. It simply means the essay did not work as well an another essay did within the book as a whole. Don’t let this stop you writing or submitting your writing in future!