'I would love young autistic girls to find this book, first and foremost…there’s not a lot of books out there where they would see themselves reflected back.'

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For May that debut is Kay Kerr’s YA novel Please Don’t Hug Me, out now from Text Publishing. Erin is looking forward to Schoolies, at least she thinks she is. But things are not going to plan. Life is getting messy, and for Erin, who is autistic, that’s a big problem. Please Don’t Hug Me is a funny-serious own-voices story about what happens when you stop trying to be the person other people expect you to be and give yourself a go.

Kay Kerr is a former journalist and community newspaper editor from Brisbane, now living on the Sunshine Coast with her husband and daughter and working as a freelance writer. Kay was writing the first draft of Please Don’t Hug Me when she received her own autism-spectrum diagnosis.

Our June First Book Club title will be Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs (Scribe Publications). Our theme song is Broke for Free’s ‘Something Elated’.

Further reading:

Read Ellen Cregan’s review of Please Don't Hug Me in our May Books Roundup.

Read Kay’s Shelf Reflection on her reading habits and the writing that inspired the novel.

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