Check out our interview with S. E. Thomson, the author of "A Life in Too Many Margins."

What was your inspiration behind your most recent book? 

The book was actually conceived because I had been told countless times "you should write a book about your [chaotic] life,” which I had always spun into hilarious retellings. After about two decades of that, I finally realized that maybe they were right, but for a different reason. I wanted to create a love letter for people like me who have spent their lives constantly trying to adapt to a world that feels like it was built for a completely different species. My goal was to show what it’s like to navigate life as a disabled, neurodivergent, queer human, often without even realizing the mental and physical gymnastics you're forced into just to exist. I wrote it hoping someone would read it and feel seen.

What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?

For me, Reading Rainbow is a multi-layered cake of defiance. It’s the pride of putting a queer story out into a world that often prefers us in the footnotes, but it’s also the personal pride of looking at how far I’ve come. Navigating life as an autistic queer trans man with chronic pain is essentially playing a video game on the highest difficulty setting with a glitchy controller. Successfully finishing a book and then having the audacity to be proud of it feels like a massive win. It’s pride on so many levels that I’m basically a walking, talking rainbow-colored skyscraper right now.

Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books? 

I find myself feeling sad quite often about the lack of disability representation in fiction, especially contemporary literary fiction including ND folks and people of color and/or other intersectional groups. It’s gotten better in recent years as we’ve moved away from disabled characters being villains or “inspiration pornography,” but my dream world would have an entire section of marginalized authors in every bookstore!

Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.

"A Life in Too Many Margins" is a darkly funny, deeply personal collection that blends memoir-style storytelling with sharp humor and emotional honesty, exploring themes such as growing up misunderstood, navigating trauma, relationships, identity, and the exhausting, sometimes unhinged work of trying to exist when you’re different. It’s written as a fictional memoir, about a boy called David, and is told in a raw, unfiltered and fractured mix of rambles, rants, essays, and letters from the edge of burnout.

In terms of why I kept writing once I started, the thought that someone somewhere will read a line I wrote and it will affect them or change their mind or make them realize something they never knew makes me want to cry. I’ve gotten a few emails like that already, from people telling me how much it affected them, and it’s certainly overwhelming. It’s really the core of why I bothered to publish it at all. Indirectly, the hyperfixated zone I get into with the brain to fingers to word processor sessions is lovely for my AuDHD noggin.

What can fans expect from your book?

Between unpredictable joints, cruel relationships, creeping dysphoria, and backward institutions that treat disabled people like spreadsheet errors, David’s not sure how much longer he can keep pretending to be “fine.” Along the way, David finds unexpected connections along the way, through equally chaotic friends, a dungeon master who lets him play with varying gender options, and one particularly lovely German policeman on a sheep farm in the mountains. The best part is not knowing what to expect! But you can expect to be surprised.

What's up next for you in the bookish world?

I made a list at 19 years old, with my friend Fernando, of 100 things to do before I die. I’ve currently done 97 of them. The book will be about those adventures and my quest to finish the list, wrapping up with the last one being written as it happens. It will be framed in David’s world again, so that you can continue his journey with him. A bit more memoir, a bit more fiction. Either way, it will be full of shenanigans.