Contact
Beth Mende Conny
301/694-9921
Beth@WriteDirections.com

AUTHOR SARAH STUP — FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How would you describe yourself?
I am God’s child, and I try my best to be a good citizen. I love my family and home. A time I treasure is visiting beaches and walking through parks. Another favorite is fancy coffee drinks. Mostly I am Sarah the typer with autism.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
When the world heard my silent typing voice I became a real person. With writing I am alive. When I write I am not held back at all. I can be anyone or anything, and I can go new places with new ideas. For me, writing is power and freedom. Writing is what I need.

How and where do you write?
A place I love to write is my cozy kitchen booth. I know its sights and sounds well so autism can rest there. Time spent typing and planning and dreaming pleases me. Paper strips hold my words that reach out to you from my world of silence and loneliness.

What influences your work?
My wish to help people with developmental disabilities get better lives is what I am seeking with my words. I like to send messages of hope and understanding from the real people who are inside bodies that work differently. The words can change minds.

What writers or types of writing do you enjoy?
Robert Frost’s poetry makes me see new in the ordinary, and Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables makes me laugh inside. Anne Frank and I both write about hiding.

How do you balance advocacy and entertainment in your writing?
When the reader joins me inside my character’s view of the world, the reader listens in a new way. Views must entertain to be contemplated long. Entertainment is a key that unlocks and opens minds and hearts. Entertainment may be less important, but it is first.

Your first book, Do-si-Do with Autism, is for elementary school-aged children. Your second, Are Your Eyes Listening?, is a collection of adult writings. What is your next writing project?
Now I am writing a middle-grade novel about Paul and his Beast. The Beast is really autism, the thief of friendship and politeness.

What lesson would you like your books to teach?
Those with disabilities and other differences are real people inside bodies that work differently. We are worth knowing. A plan I have is to build a new exotic garden where two worlds meet and differences are not feared.