Books
I write about the outsiders, the misfits, and the beautifully complicated.
I am a Bipolar-AuDHD (autism+ADHD), award-winning author of more than fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction and dozens of essays, stories, and poems.
Forthcoming Books
Good Enough Writer: A Guide for the Outsiders, the Misfits, and the Beautifully Complicated.
In Progress.
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Demon’s Kin: A Novel. Book 1 of the Demonkin Trilogy
Contemporary paranormal romance featuring a smartass main character with C-PTSD. Under consideration.
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An Autistic Girl’s Guide to Horses: A Memoir of a Horse Girl and the Lost Generation of Autistic Adults
Forthcoming from West Virginia University Press, 2027
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Neurodivergent & Expecting: An Insider’s Guide to Planning, Pregnancy, and Postpartum
Forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press, 2027
Recent Books
Over the past few years, I have focused on the experience of being neurodivergent in a world not designed for us, turning that lens on different arenas: higher education, parenthood, and pregnancy.
YOUR KID BELONGS HERE (2025)
Your Kid Belongs Here: An Insider's Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children (Johns Hopkins 2025). Stories and research come together to support parents of neurodivergent kids.
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"Essential reading for parents, teachers, and professionals." -Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures
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"Pryal provides a sensitive and comprehensive resource. Parents, teachers, and others working with neurodiverse kids will find this a boon." -Publisher's Weekly
A LIGHT IN THE TOWER (2024)
A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education (Kansas 2024). Evocative storytelling plus incisive research bring a new eye to the mental health crisis that higher education has faced for decades.
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**Winner of the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal in Education**
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“Essential reading for anyone in academia with a disability, but also those without one to know how to better support their colleagues and classmates.” -Eric Garcia, author of We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation
Neurodiversity Stories
In this series of sharp essay collections, I use storytelling, research, and humor to pull the curtain back on taboo subjects such as mental illness, neurodiversity, disclosing diagnoses in the workplace, and sexual assault. I map what these challenges cost, and how to find a way through. If you want to learn more to help a friend, or if you are looking for affirmation of your own experiences, look right here at these award-winning books.
LIFE OF THE MIND INTERRUPTED (2017)
LIFE OF THE MIND INTERRUPTED: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education (Blue Osprey Books Paperback and Ebook, 2017. Blackstone Audio 2022.)
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"If you want to understand how higher education is built, and not built, for people with disabilities—especially mental health-related ones—Pryal's book is for you." -Book Riot
EVEN IF YOU'RE BROKEN (2023)
EVEN IF YOU'RE BROKEN: Bodies, Boundaries, and Mental Health (Blue Osprey Books 2019, Revised and Expanded Edition 2023.)
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*Winner of the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal in women’s issues*
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"Deftly sews together a patchwork quilt of stories, raw emotion, and insights that will touch every reader. The result is moving, vital and somehow hopeful for survivors and society both.” -Washington Post bestselling author Kelly Harms
THE FREELANCE ACADEMIC (2024)
The Freelance Academic: Reclaim Your Career, Creativity, and Mental Health (Revised & Expanded ed., Blue Osprey 2024): A critique of how higher education has pushed its workforce to the margins, sacrificing student learning.
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*Winner of the Foreword INDIES Gold Award*
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“Both a piercing examination of how higher education institutions exploit adjunct faculty and untenured staff and a roadmap that’s as practical as it is hopeful." -BookTrib Magazine
The Hollywood Lights Series
Contemporary romance under the lights of Los Angeles.
Welcome to Hollywood Lights, where star-crossed lovers orbit each other until the pull becomes irresistible, friendships are forged in crisis and kept through everything, and everybody gets a happy every after (but not without fighting for it).
Set against the glittering, unforgiving world of Los Angeles, the five-book Hollywood Lights Series follows a found family of fascinating, complicated, neurodivergent people as they build careers, protect each other, and stumble toward love. Each book stands alone, but together they tell one sweeping story of what it means to find your people and refuse to let them go.
Expect slow-burn tension, razor-sharp banter, wounded heroes, women who don’t apologize for who they are, and happily-ever-afters that are genuinely earned.
Read Hollywood Lights if you love…
- Found family
- Neurodivergent protagonists
- Slow burn
- Wounded hero / heroine
- Friends-to-lovers
- Enemies-to-lovers
- Star-crossed lovers
- Hollywood / film industry setting
- Guaranteed HEA (happily ever after)
- Interconnected standalones
*TAKE YOUR CHARMING SOMEWHERE ELSE is the winner of the IPPY Gold Medal in Romance.*
Praise for the Hollywood Lights Series
“Modern, fresh, and entirely credible, Fallout Girl is a love story wrapped inside a heart-rending struggle for personal freedom.” -Washington Post bestselling author Sonja Yoerg for Booktrib Magazine
“As glamorous and mercurial as Hollywood itself, Chasing Chaos is a novel that glitters.” –New York Times bestselling author Eileen Goudge for Booktrib Magazine
“A gut-wrenching journey through darkness to redemption, one that proves that love, and family, can conquer anything. Take Your Charming Somewhere Else is her best yet. Do not miss this emotional tour-de-force—or anything Pryal writes.” –Washington Post bestselling author Kelly Harms
LOVE AND ENTROPY is free!
Read the compelling prequel to the Hollywood Lights Series.
Click the cover to download your copy.
Entanglement: A Hollywood Lights Novel
When you’re desperate for love…You’ll do anything to keep it. Anything.
Chasing Chaos: A Hollywood Lights Novel
She would do anything to protect the ones she loves. He would do anything to win her back.
How to Stay: A Hollywood Lights Novella
When your life is a secret, can you ever find love?
Fallout Girl: A Hollywood Lights Novel
Can he convince her to live? Can he convince her to love?
Take Your Charming Somewhere Else: A Hollywood Lights Novel
He is desperate for redemption…And her love is the key. WINNER of the IPPY GOLD MEDAL in Romance!