About Lauren Melissa

Lauren Melissa Ellzey, also known as Autienelle, is a novelist and Autistic advocate living in New York City.

Her writing has been inspired by and honed through her passion for her autistic special interests. Since early childhood, she brought pen to paper to bring to voice to the interests that others often hushed when she spoke. Ellzey's craft was further developed at Scripps College, where she earned a BA in Creative Writing: Fiction, as well as the Crombie Allen Award for Writing and the Senior Thesis Award for her novella, If Women Were Moments. Since then, she has published three young adult fiction novels, Boy at the Window, Gimmicks and Glamour, and StreamLine with Bold Strokes Books.

Her identities serve as the central theme of her craft, highlighting autism, queerness, and Black and multiracial experiences.

Many writers are also excellent readers, as reflected in Ellzey's Master of Science in Library & Information Science from Syracuse University.

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Hello! The majority of my advocacy work is self-initiated. Inspired by my own autism diagnosis in my early 20s, I began sharing my history and coping strategies through social media in 2016 as a personal means of weaving into the work of the neurodivergent community. 

Since then, my advocacy has reached beyond the internet, surfacing in conferences, workshops, magazines, and podcasts.

In all, I hope to co-create a society where autistics nurture autistics as we strive toward true inclusion.