Ralph James Savarese is the author of Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption (Other Press 2007), which Newsweek called a “real life love story and an urgent manifesto for the rights of people with neurological disabilities.” While promoting the book, he appeared on a host of radio and TV programs, including NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” and CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” He is also the co-editor of three collections: Papa PhD: Men in the Academy Write about Fatherhood (Rutgers University Press 2010), a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly titled “Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity” (2010), and a special issue of Seneca Review titled “The Lyrical Body” (2010).
He is the recipient of a number of awards: the Irene Glascock National Undergraduate Poetry Competition (the judges were Seamus Heaney and Amy Clampitt), the Hennig Cohen Prize from the Herman Melville Society for an “outstanding contribution to Melville scholarship,” an Independent Publisher’s Gold Medal for Reasonable People in the category of health/medicine/nutrition, a Mellon Foundation “Humanities Writ Large” fellowship (which supported a year-long residency at Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences), two “notable essay” distinctions in the Best American Essay series, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship.
His scholarship, creative work, and opinion pieces have appeared, among other places, in American Literature, American Poetry Review, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, the Des Moines Register, Disability Studies Quarterly, The Ethics of Neurodiversity, Foundations of Disability Studies, Fourth Genre, Frontiers of Integrative Neuroscience, the Houston Chronicle, Keywords in Disability Studies, the LA Times, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Modern Poetry in Translation, Narrative, New England Review, the Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, Ploughshares, Rethinking Empathy through Literature, Seneca Review, Sewanee Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Southwest Review.
He can be seen in three documentaries about autism: Loving Lampposts, Living Autistic; Finding Amanda; and Deej. The third follows his adoptive son, DJ, from eighth grade through his first year at Oberlin College, where he was the institution’s first nonspeaking student with autism. The film’s many honors include a Peabody Award and “Best of Festival” at Superfest, the international disability film festival.
Savarese teaches American literature, disability studies, medical humanities, and creative writing at Grinnell College in Iowa.
