KATIE ROSE GUEST PRYAL
KATIE ROSE GUEST PRYAL
Bipolar-AuDHD (Autistic + ADHD) law and creative writing professor, neurodiversity expert, and award-winning author.
Expert on managing mental health and neurodiversity in higher education and the workplace, and author of A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education and Life of the Mind Interrupted (10th Anniversary Edition).
Expert on helping neurodiverse families, and author of Your Kid Belongs Here: An Insider’s Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children and Neurodivergent and Expecting.
Do you want to create a thriving community for your neurodivergent community members? Do you want to support your community’s mental health? Dr. Katie Pryal has the answers.
© Trevor Holman Photography
Katie Rose Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., is a Bipolar-AuDHD (Autistic+ADHD) writer, educator, and expert in neurodiversity and mental health. A sought-after speaker, when you hire Dr. Pryal for your keynote or workshop, you're giving your audience practical tools they can use immediately. She combines storytelling with research-backed strategies to help people understand how mental health and neurodiversity issues manifest in their daily work across educational settings, corporate and nonprofit teams, and family environments.
An award-winning author of more than 15 books with a background in disability law and higher education studies, Dr. Pryal understands the structural barriers that prevent truly inclusive environments—and she knows how to dismantle them. Her recent titles include YOUR KID BELONGS HERE (Johns Hopkins 2025) and A LIGHT IN THE TOWER (Kansas 2024). NEURODIVERGENT AND EXPECTING is coming in 2027 from Johns Hopkins, and her literary memoir, AN AUTISTIC GIRL’S GUIDE TO HORSES, is coming in 2028 from West Virginia. A Pushcart-nominated essayist, she is a professor in Drexel University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Her deep expertise allows her to give audiences practical tools to create spaces where everyone can thrive.
Are you searching for ways to embrace neurodiversity in your organization? Are you unsure how best to accommodate mental health struggles? In this talk, Dr. Pryal uses her decades of expertise to help audiences understand what neurodiversity is, how it relates to mental health, and how to bring neurodivergent community members into the fold. Key audience takeaways include (1) a deeper understanding of neurodiversity and mental health struggles, (2) strategies for creating true inclusion of neurodivergent community members, and (3) groundbreaking techniques for accommodating mental health struggles and neurodiversity.
Are you a neurodivergent parent or parent of neurodivergent children facing constant barriers? Does your organization wish to include neurodivergent parents and children in your community? In this talk, Dr. Pryal, a neurodivergent mom to two neurodivergent kids, recounts frustrating yet inspiring stories from her own childhood and from parenthood, paired with the latest research on how our society treats neurodivergent kids. Key audience takeaways include (1) a deeper understanding of what neurodiversity is and how it affects families; (2) strategies for how parents (and coaches, teachers, and more) can help neurodiverse children thrive, and (3) how organizations can create inclusive communities for parents and children that gather everyone with accessibility and empathy.
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.
Your Kid Belongs Here: An Insider's Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children
A compassionate and comprehensive guide to parenting neurodivergent children.
Neurodivergent and Expecting: An Insider's Guide to Planning, Pregnancy, and Postpartum
A compassionate and comprehensive guide to parenting neurodivergent children.
A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education
With evocative storytelling and incisive research, Pryal brings a new eye to the mental health crisis that higher education has faced for decades. Addressing the stigma that haunts mental disability on campus, the ableism that dogs our teaching, and the cascade of mental health struggles that far too many faculty and students face, Pryal provides straightforward solutions to these complex problems. Our communities must only garner the courage to take the necessary steps.
Even If You’re Broken: Bodies, Boundaries, and Mental Health.
How do we make a good life in a world where sexual violence always lurks in the shadows?
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.
Monthly writing about mental health, creativity, and making our way as misfits in a world that isn't always designed for us. Some essays, some short pieces, some letters, some pages from my works-in-progress. SUBSCRIBE HERE.