Author: Jaime Hoerricks

Dr. Jaime Hoerricks (she/they) is an autistic, ADHD, gestalt language processor, special education teacher, literacy specialist, and author whose work bridges lived experience with professional practice. Based in Los Angeles, she has authored three major books for Lived Places Publishing—No Place for Autism? (2023), Holistic Language Instruction (2024), and Decolonising Language Education (2025)—alongside more than a thousand articles on autism, language, and education. A credentialled special educator with three master’s degrees and a PhD, Dr. Hoerricks integrates classroom practice, systemic analysis, and narrative craft to reimagine literacy for gestalt language processors. Her research and teaching challenge deficit-based framings of autism and advocate for meaning-based, accessible, and affirming approaches to learning. Beyond the classroom, she is widely recognised for her critical writing on the intersections of neurodivergence, gender, and society, and for her commitment to reframing autistic communication as a site of strength, creativity, and knowledge.

A lone person, facing away, walking through the forest with lots of tress.

Autism Was Never an Accident

Autism was never an accident of Tylenol or vaccines or industrial life. It is not a side effect to be managed, nor a pathology to be cured. Autism has been preserved through millennia of natural selection as our ongoing contribution to humanity’s survival.

 
The community garden founded by Jaime Hoerrick's class

The Autistic Way of Proceeding

by Jaime Hoerricks // Parents and medical professionals often look upon autistic behaviour as problematic, and sometimes harmful. They see “treatment” as a way to change the behaviour, measured externally by someone other than the autistic person. Jaime Hoerricks offers a different perspective, from personal and professional lived experience.  

 
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