Autistic Reader Interview: Chelsey Flood
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning YA novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE.
She is currently working on a literary memoir, Beautiful Hangover: How a late autism diagnosis helped me make peace with a drunken past and writes a newsletter of the same title at Substack.
Chelsey lives in Bristol, UK, with her partner and their pets.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. Is there anything you've written or made recently that you'd like other readers to know about? Other than what's in your bio, is there anything about your connection to autism, books, and reading that you'd like to share?
I’m halfway through a draft of Beautiful Hangover, which is a memoir about getting sober, discovering I’m autistic and making peace with the many struggles of my past. I started a blog of the same name a few years ago, before I knew I was autistic, because I was amazed at how much I loved life without alcohol, after years of being fairly dependant on it. I wanted to share my experience with everyone!
And then, a few years into sobriety, as I noticed how my social anxiety refused to go away, and my rumination and self-consciousness continued, I gradually worked out there was something else going on with me. That I had been drinking to cope. Eventually I worked out I was autistic, and my life is much more manageable now I am getting a better idea of how to work to my strengths. I have noticed that a lot of autistic people use alcohol as a way to hide their differences and sensitivities, and so I hope writing about my experience will help them feel less alone or maybe even find less destructive ways to manage. I think it’s sad we feel we have to hide so much of ourselves and it upsets me the way that drinking culture perfectly facilitates it.
Reading has always been crucial for my wellbeing. I have learnt a lot from books about psychology, desire and motivation, and I’ve learned how I want to be from them, too. Writing has always been a way I process my experiences, though I have gotten better at actually living in the world too, as I get older, and not living so much in the retreats away in which I write about it! Both also offer an escape too. And rest, which I find I need a lot.
What are some of your favorite works of fiction? What makes them your favorites?
This is a very difficult question. The books that are popping into my head now are The First Bad Man by Miranda July, which I love because it’s so weird and kind of gross. Also very funny. She puts you really deeply into this other person’s mind, and I am sure lots of the weirdness is from her own neuroses, because it often feels too odd to be invented.
I also love First Love by Gwendoline Riley, which is a novel about emotional abuse or so it seems to me, but which is also pretty funny. Again, the voice is so strong, and there is such a lot of the unpalatable truth of what it is like to be a person in it – that’s what I love in fiction.
I also recently read and loved The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Again, a compelling protagonist, but this time some murder and intrigue as well as all the complex human relationships.
What are some of the characters in fiction that you find most relatable? Some autistic readers love autistic representation, and others prefer aliens, robots, or characters who they relate to in a subtler way; do you notice any patterns in the kinds of characters that resonate for you?
I love books with weird and unconventional narrators that critique mainstream culture, because it often makes little sense to me, and I can totally understand the urge to abandon it entirely. Or to end up being destroyed by it. I’m a lecturer at university and so I assign a lot of readings, and I have noticed that a lot of the protagonists of stories I assign are damaged females with serious intimacy issues. No idea why I find those books so fascinating ; )
Have you ever had a special interest in a fiction series or genre of fiction? What makes a work of fiction special-interest-worthy for you - or do the interests seem to descend at random?
As a kid I devoured Point Horror books, and also this series called Making Out about kids living on an island somewhere in North America, and just falling in and out of love with each other. I remember being OBSESSED with them. As an adult I got really into Beat literature, then Russian literature and The Classics. Spiky ultra-intelligent female writers like Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch. Then loads of YA as I was writing my novels. Then dozens of sobriety memoirs as I was writing my own. I also absolutely love post-apocalyptic stories. What comes after this mess we have made with so-called civilisation? I want to write one of those one day.
My interests seem to descend at random.
What makes a book difficult for you to read? What, if anything, helps make books accessible to you?
Another thing I learned fairly recently is that I have no mind’s eye. Aphantasia, they call it. Which helps me understand why I cannot get through large chunks of description in books. I build the worlds I read about and its vivid enough that I LOVE reading, but it must be made out of emotion and imagination, because there’s no pictures and little physicality. Cormack McCarthy’s style of writing is my nightmare. My brain just gets lost in the sentences and I give up very quickly.
Character is what makes books accessible to me. And voice.
This month at Everything Is True, we’re interviewing a wide variety of autistic readers with questions like these! You can find a schedule with the rest of the interviews here.