Matt Kendrick
Writer | Editor | Teacher
WELKIN GENRE PRIZE 2026 - SHORTLISTED
Issue
by Jeffrey-Michael Kane
He lines the cars up by length, then colour, then model, then length again, and I know before the clinic does. I have those hands. As a child, I ordered entire worlds; he orders cars.
When the word comes, I grieve as if I’ve handed down a wound—my blood, my fault, the thing I've spent forty years apologising for, now in him. Others call it a defect. It isn’t. But what I’ve given him is a world that would call it one.
Across the room, he moves on to ordering blocks, and doesn’t look up.
Jeffrey-Michael Kane writes from New Orleans where he works as an attorney. He is the author of the non-fiction book Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk UK). His essay, “Nomenclature of a Life”, cataloguing his experience as an ASD-1, was awarded the Ellis Prize for Non-Fiction (New Ohio Review). His writing has appeared in cultural, theological, and literary journals that appreciate compression—and his willingness to obey word counts.
