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Current Call for Submissions

Connections and Community (7.1)
Deadline: September 15, 2025

The last few issues of Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture have led to many wonderful pieces that story and research individual autistic experiences. However, at a time of much instability and political contention, along with exciting changes in our own editorial team, we want to create space to (re) connect as a community. The Fall 2025 issue (7.1) will explore how we forge links across community, family, town, country, or world.

This issue will share and celebrate how we are better together—or consider how we could be better. Connection can be experienced in many different modalities and communities, through physical community, spiritual exchange, a response to an artist’s final product, connections between atypical selves, or allyships between neurotypical and atypical individuals.

We seek pieces that explore connections, including artwork, poetry, scholarly essays, original research, theoretical considerations, and personal narratives. These pieces may share lived experiences, present academic research, or imagine future possibilities. We encourage a wide variety of submissions. Please consider the following ideas:

  • Narrative connection through storytelling
  • Connection as a means of community repair
  • Creative descriptions of communal spaces that connect us
  • Unusual or atypical means of connection
  • Forms and modes of artistic connection
  • Neurotypical to neurodivergent connections
  • Inclusive politics that connects all beings

Please submit via http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ought.

Misinformation (7.2)
Deadline: March 15, 2026

There has always been misinformation about autism and autistic people. Even before the official existence of the diagnostic label, conjecture about autism’s cause has led to false leads, and sometimes, outright falsehoods. Misinformation about autistic people abounds in literature, television, and film representations even today. Consequently, autistic individuals face discrimination in daily interactions with misinformed neurotypical people.

In this particular historical moment, we are seeing an increasing spread of misinformation about autism—often on behalf of governmental agencies. What are autistic advocates doing to counter that misinformation? How has our community responded to stereotyping, misinformation, and disinformation?

For this issue (7.2), Ought seek pieces that explore these issues. Art, poems, scholarly essays, original research, theoretical considerations, and personal narratives are encouraged.Consider the following ideas:

  • The effect that misinformation, disinformation, and/or malinformation has on autistic people, their families, or their communities
  • How misinformation about autism may contribute to stereotyping, discrimination, and even violence
  • How misinformation may (mis)inform the search for causation and/or the search for a cure
  • Misinformation and/or stereotypes of autistic people presented in literature, film, or other media
  • Examples of how autistic advocates have responded to misinformation and/or disinformation

Please submit via http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ought.