KATIE ROSE GUEST PRYAL
© Trevor Holman Photography
Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., is a lawyer and rhetorician—an expert in public discourse and how it influences policy—whose main focus is mental illness and neurodiversity and making the world more accessible to all people. She is also autistic and has bipolar disorder, and she speaks about her experiences living with a neurodivergent mind.
She the author of the #1 Amazon bestseller Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education (2017); the INDIE Gold award-winner The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career (2019); the IPPY Gold award-winner Even If You’re Broken: Essays on Sexual Assault and #MeToo (2019); and 2023's Darkness Interrupted: Reckoning with Mental Health in High Education.
She is an adjunct professor law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she spent 10 years as full-time faculty. She is now a full-time writer and speaker, and holds a position Of Counsel at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP.
Speech topics
Reckoning with Systemic Burnout
We are living in a time of systemic burnout brought on by COVID-19. The pandemic is a “population shock” event, causing rates of anxiety and depression to raise all over the world. In the U.S., rates are up by nearly 25%. This seriousness of this mental health toll is only now being acknowledged—across various professions, in higher education, and more. Workers, parents, students, professionals, and entrepreneurs are all suffering; systemic burnout doesn’t discriminate. But when we are suffering, we often don’t recognize it, and when we do, we don’t know what do to about it.
In this talk, Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., award-winning author of Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education, applies her decade-plus of research on mental health and organizations to help your group understand systemic burnout, spot it, and then address it. In either a keynote or workshop format, customized to your needs, Dr. Pryal delivers hopeful guidance in these challenging times.
The Mind Matters: Building Stronger Communities Through Mental Health Acceptance
How do we make a better world—big and small—in the face of the immense neurodiversity we are only beginning to understand? According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1 in 5 US adults will experience a mental disorder every year. This high rate takes its toll: on family, friends, workplaces, and, most of all, on the people themselves—who must deal not only with their disabilities but with lack of understanding and acceptance.
In this talk, Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., author of the bestselling book Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education, applies her decade of research on mental health and organizations to guide your group toward a holistic understanding of mental health, community, accessibility, and wellness. In either a keynote or workshop format, customized to your organization's needs, Dr. Pryal brings inspirational guidance that executives, leaders, and all organizational members can use to set a tone of support and growth.
Mom, Interrupted: Supporting Exceptional Children, Their Parents, and Their Communities
What do exceptional children need from their communities in order to live happy and successful lives?
Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., was an exceptional child with exceptional needs—and now she’s raising two of them herself. Bestselling author and writer of the popular column “Mom, Interrupted” for the magazine Catapult, Dr. Pryal draws on her own childhood experiences as she recounts heartwarming and hilarious stories of parenting her exceptional children. Schools, parenting organizations, social workers, and other groups that care about children will fall in love with Dr. Pryal's heartfelt, frustrating, yet somehow funny stories from the parenting front lines. And they will leave with key takeways: from protecting the privacy of children in our age of oversharing to figuring out how to find the right adults to include in a child's life. (Hint: They're not always who you think they should be). Although the road we're traveling right now isn't always accessible for disabled kids, together we can help make the ride a little smoother.
Building a Sustaining Solo Business in the New Gig Economy
Katie Pryal, author of the award-winning book THE FREELANCE ACADEMIC, inspires listeners to build sustainable work in the jungle of the new gig economy. Pryal built a second career while teaching as a non-tenure-track law professor—until finally making the leap out of the academy. In this talk, she shares her secrets for success. Not just for academics, this talk inspires listeners to transform their current skills, whatever they may be, into something sustaining—professionally and personally. Pryal helps listeners figure out the best kind of work for them, whether they are starting from the ground up with a brand new career or adding onto the work they are already doing. She provides practical tips for how to set up different types of business formations, from sole proprietorships all the way to corporations, describing the benefits of each for each type of business. Audiences will leave her talk inspired and informed.
Books
Darkness Interrupted: Reckoning with Mental Health in High Education
How the COVID-19 pandemic has squeezed higher education, revealing the mental health crisis that higher education has faced for years, and how stigma against mental disabilities prevents higher education from effectively addressing this crisis, due out spring 2023.
The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career
Higher education has changed—and we have to change with it. The Freelance Academic will show you how.
Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education
Academia isn’t an easy place to be if your brain isn’t quite right.
Even If You're Broken: Essays on Sexual Assault and #MeToo
How do we make a good life in a world where sexual violence always lurks in the shadows?