James Beardsley earned his MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, was born in Chesapeake, and resides in Virginia Beach, connecting him indelibly to three of the seven cities of Hampton Roads. For more than a decade, he has written about childhood and mental health, with the goal of offering neurodivergent people the support he didn’t have growing up. He’s autistic and, in a reversal from middle school, doesn’t mind you finding that out.