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Zachariah OHora is a New York Times best-selling illustrator and author of numerous picture books and the Show Creator and Executive Producer of the ground breaking new animated show on PBS KIDS, "Carl the Collector." It follows an autistic raccoon who loves to collect things along with his neurotypical and neurodiverse friends. The show features autistic actors, writers, and neurodiverse people on all levels of production.
"Neurocurious" describes someone who is actively exploring their own neurocognitive functioning and the broader concepts of neurodiversity. This session will talk about OHora's own path of consciousness exploration from experiments with LSD in his early 20's leading to insights that directly influenced his picture book making. In a quest to celebrate weirdness as a positive attribute, it lead to the creation of a character that teachers and librarians used as a way of talking about autism. Positive portrayals of autism in children's media are scarce even though one in twenty three kids are diagnosed with autism or some form of neurodiversity. It was through this experience that he began to think about creating television media specifically targeted to and celebrating neurodiversity with the explicit goal of spreading empathy and awareness of the whole spectrum of humanity.