READINGS BY NEURODIVERGENT WRITERS

Facilitator: Michele Van Valey

Venue: Red Room

2:00pm - 3:00pm

Michele Van Valey (She/Her)

Hello, I’m Michele, a Psychotherapist with a strong background in mindfulness and yoga. I work with individuals, couples and groups in Terenure in addition to developing well-being and inclusion programmes in workplaces and schools around Dublin. Since University, I have known that I’m dyslexic but have only recently come to understand that I am also dyspraxic, probably Autistic. The two years I spent with Neurodiversity Ireland developing their educational webinar series was illuminating and fuelled my passion to make education more accessible for everyone. As I’m learning more about neurotypes, I’m loving that the conversation is finally moving away from neuro-deficit toward neuro-differences. Celebrating the variety of different ways of being in the world is what inspired Neuroconvergence, our creative, neuro-inclusive gathering. 

Dee Roycroft (She/Her)

Dee is an award-winning neurodivergent writer and performer living in Dublin. An alumnus of the Abbey Theatre’s Next Wave Playwrighting initiative, she is a recipient of a Mountains to the Sea Bursary 2025, and Arts Council funding to develop her play Faun. She was the winner of Scripts Ireland with her play an angel in centra, and her solar-punk play amelia had a sold-out run as part of Dublin Theatre Festival in Oct 2024.

Later this year, Dee’s first film The Colonist is being produced as a Screen Ireland Focus Short with Promenade Films, and she is currently writing her first feature Being Brendan. She has been shortlisted for Druid Debuts, the RTÉ Short Story Competition, and her RTEjr radio series for children ‘Mr. Wall’ was nominated for an IMRO award for Best Radio Drama.

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan (She/Her)

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is Indian-Irish writer, performer, and cultural consultant. Her work has been published by Dedalus Press, New Island, Banshee, Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland, and others. She often works with poetry as a method of science communication, and was the 2023 Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics and a 2024 Goethe-Institut Studio Quantum Artist in Residence. She is a Skein Press Play it Forward Fellow, and her debut poetry collection is being published with Dedalus Press in 2026.

Susan Lynch (She/Her)

Susan Lynch is a Dublin playwright whose work explores identity, power, and the human cost of technological and social systems. She is particularly interested in how technology reshapes identity and memory.

Susan’s plays frequently blend speculative elements with recognisable domestic or social settings with the intention of interrogating contemporary life. She has developed work for stage, screen, and interactive contexts. Her practice is informed by a background in technology.

Caoimh Connolly Murphy (He/Him)

Caoimh Connolly Murphy is a 22-year-old autistic nonspeaking writer. Caoimh was deemed by professionals to be "severely intellectually disabled" as a young child, unable to understand anything more than very basic language. Caoimh overturned this diagnosis when he developed fluent linguistic communication by the age of 12. This occurred after his writer mother, Adrienne Murphy, perceived the real nature of his disability, and spent 18 months teaching him the purposeful motor movement of pointly accurately at letters on a letterboard. 

When Caoimh had the ability to communicate his thoughts, one of the first things he wrote was that he'd learned to read by himself as a toddler; but that no one knew he could read until he'd been deliberately taught to overcome his dyspraxia to the point that he could point accurately at letters, and hence express his erstwhile locked in thoughts.  

Caoimh's writing has appeared in the Irish national newspapers. He is an award-winning poet. Caoimh is currently working on a personal essay commissioned by autistic writer and editor Niamh Garvey, for inclusion in an anthology of essays by other autistic writers, due for publication in 2027.