152 x 203mm, 160 pages, black and white printing, perfect bound, 2018

NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) is a journey of two writers who become lovers who become parents of a special needs daughter. Their experience fumbling toward understanding reveals a medical establishment strangely at odds with understanding.  Their journey unpins the ground beneath them—as diagnosis, as treatment, as daily living, as language—releasing both ferocity and empathy on a scale unimagined by either party. Necessarily hybrid, NOS is a mixed-form narrative about autism and parenting, that’s also a document of trauma. In the extreme present of living a life not otherwise specified, the authors give both voice and shape to the complex journey of a family—not just one child—living with autism.

From the authors:

The etiology of autism involves the study of factors arrayed like suns in the code of spectrum. Many lights and no system. During the first five years of our daughter’s life, we spent cumulative months in hospitals, doctor’s offices, emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, therapy clinics, and laboratories. Medical encounters became existential tremors. But the other side of disorder is advocacy, and NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) documents.

Aby Kaupang is the author of Disorder 299.00, w/ Matthew Cooperman, (Essay Press, 2016), Little “g” God Grows Tired of Me (Spring Gun, 2013), Absence is Such a Transparent House (Tebot Bach, 2011), and Scenic Fences | Houses Innumerable (Scantily Clad Press, 2008). She holds Master’s degrees in both Creative Writing and Occupational Therapy and lives in Fort Collins, where she served as Poet Laureate from 2015–17.

Matthew Cooperman is the author of, most recently, Spool, winner of the New Measure Prize (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2016), Disorder 299.00 w/ Aby Kaupang (Essay Press, 2016), the text + image collaboration Imago for the Fallen World, w/ Marius Lehene (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013), and other books. A professor of English at Colorado State University, he is also co-poetry editor for Colorado Review. He lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children.

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