![The Gift of Families [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/536px-Steven_Spielberg_by_Gage_Skidmore-1.jpg)
This article was inspired by Steven Spielberg's movie, The Fabelmans. It is a look back to his childhood inspirations and a nod to his family. As the pandemic worsened, Spielberg said: “As things got worse and worse, I felt that if I was going to leave anything...
![Brilliant Actress Morfydd Clark [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Morfydd_Clark_2022-1.png)
“When on stage, I have good concentration. When I don’t find something interesting, I can’t concentrate.” — Morfydd Clark Brilliant, beautiful, and brave actress Morfydd Clark is mesmerizing in Rings of Power as the Elven warrior Galadriel. “I wasn’t great in class and suffered from dyslexia and ADHD; still do. As a result I could never sit in class listening quietly, and my attention would inevitably end up wandering after a short while.” — Morfydd Clark Morfydd had long been a fan of Lord of the Rings because her father had read The Hobbit to her and she had listened to Lord of the Rings on audiobooks. She has said that she felt that her bilingual background helped her relate to Galadriel because Galadriel would think […]
![Dyslexic Advantages in Electrical Engineering [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Dyslexic-Advantages-in-Electrical-Engineering-Premium.jpg)
A TALE OF TWO STORIES “At the beginning I can remember looking at blackboards or pages of text having no idea what other kids around me were seeing. For me the pages may have well as been blank for all I could glean from them. However I was lucky as when I started my secondary school my teacher spotted that I was having problems. I was tested for dyslexia and found to have a mild form… By the time I left I had poor grades and was told I would not amount to much…” Same person: “I became interested in geeky stuff when I was less than ten years old. I remember being given a toy wind up clock that you could open the back […]
“…Can I just start off by making a blanket statement that I think dyslexia can be such a gift?” — Brett Kopf Brett Kopf is co-founder of Remind and Omella, two companies that grew out of his interest in solving problems that mission-driven organizations and schools face. Brett’s path from struggling in school and spending almost every day in the principal’s office, to difficulty deciding on a career path in college (agriculture?) seem disconnected to his remarkable success as a business co-founder, but there were signs of his talents even as a child. Brett remember enjoying talking to his principal, and in his job today he likes talking to customers and figuring out what they need and then brainstorming about how what he could […]
![Actor Stephen Graham [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Stephen-Graham-1.png)
Actor Stephen Graham has been described as one of the most talented actors the United Kingdom has ever seen. Yet, he almost didn’t get a chance at his breakthrough role in Snatch when the director Guy Ritchie, asked whether he had come to read for the part. Stephen had just come along to support his friend who was trying to get the job, but when Guy found out that he was also an actor, he encouraged him to give it a try. Stephen told him that because he was dyslexic, he couldn’t do a cold read. I don’t know whether he knew that Guy Ritchie is also dyslexic – but fortunately for Stephen, Guy asked him to improvise the scene instead and he completely smashed […]
“We were shooting and I said: ‘I can not do this’. I was going to quit.” — Manuel Garcia-Rulfo Manuel Garcia-Rulfo had big shoes to fill – following on Matthew McConaughey’s Mickey Haller in Netflix’s remake of The Lincoln Lawyer. English is a second language for him AND he’s dyslexic. But if you were to watch him in the role today – he’s an absolute natural. He brings distinctive differences to the role and he does marvelously. Brock and I have both been enjoying his series and also love that he’s talking about his dyslexia in interviews. García-Rulfo’s dyslexia increased his nervousness. To learn his lines, he resorted to a method taught to him by his grandmother, who was an artist.
“I […]
“Schultz, founder and director of The Writers Studio, chronicles the challenges he faced as a poet, fiction writer, and teacher that led him to see the aesthetic and psychological value of creating a writing persona. He has long confronted a pervasive inner critic that he calls “the s*bird,” whose “sole agenda is to negate and revoke…—the author discovered that a persona allowed him to distance himself from his material, such as his erratic, self\ destructive father, and his own feelings of shame and fear of failure.” – Kirkus Reviews Philip Schultz has a new book out called Comforts of the Abyss: The Art of Persona Writing where he shares his battle with dark voices in his head and how he transcends it using borrowed […]
![Dyslexia and Farming: Matt Baker [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Matt-Baker-Dyslexic-Advantage.jpg)
“If somebody asked me if I could live my life again without dyslexia, I would say no, because you recognise things and you do things differently to the way everybody else does, and that gets you to the front of the queue. You see things which are very obvious to you. I’m very practical and visual – that’s what I’m drawn to. And you find ways around challenges and it gives you a different perspective on life.” — Matt Baker of Our Farm in the Dales In the United Kingdom, research has suggested that one in ten people are dyslexic, but besides being over-represented in schools of engineering and art design, dyslexia is also found more commonly in agricultural students (one in five). […]
“There is an emotional component to the learning challenged,” says Winkler, whose parents called him “dumb dog” for his failures. “You don’t have a sense of self because you’re not keeping up with everybody… you feel terrible about yourself.” — Henry Winkler Henry Winkler seems to be everywhere. He seems to be having the time of his life and giving generously of his life lessons and hopes for the future. He’s currently in the 3rd season of HBO’s Barry, in an Emmy Award-winning role of a drama teacher, but he also finds every opportunity to share his life lessons about dyslexia and finding the very best for yourself.
In a lovely interview in the New York Times, Henry shared how he fell […]![Rogue Hero: Mastermind of the Special Air Service, David Stirling [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/David-Stirling-400x250.jpg)
“The boy Stirling is quite mad, quite, quite mad. However, in a war there is often a place for mad people.” — General Bernard Montgomery A recent documentary on the founding of the British Special Air Service mentioned that the unconventional mastermind was, in fact, dyslexic. David Stirling has a very non-linear and unpredictable start to his adult life. He started at Cambridge, but was thrown out in his first year because of a variety of poor performances and vices including gambling. He tried to make his way as an architect, then artist, then became interested in the possibility of becoming a mountaineer and reservist in the Scots Guards. David was in America working as a cowboy when the World War II began. He […]
“Books are my refuge, but I had to overcome dyslexia to write the stories I was bursting to tell.” — Natasha Solomons Natasha is a lifelong storyteller, but it took a lot of persistence and resilience to get those stories out. As a child, she listened to stories incessantly and her grandfather (also dyslexic) had the foresight to pass on his antique writing desk to her when she was just 10 years “to help her with ambition of becoming a writer.” It would be nearly 20 years later, but Natasha would write a novel at that writing desk that would earn a six-figure advance. Currently she is the author of 8 novels. She recently wrote a poignant article for The Guardian. An excerpt: “…stories […]
![The Voice Inside Your Head [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Voice-Inside-Your-Head-400x250.png)
“When I was eight years old, a school psychologist gave me a bit of advice about my brain. He said I may have a form of brain damage, and he wanted to send me to a special class. I was a classic dyslexic: I wasn’t born with a good memory, and I couldn’t concentrate; reading and writing were always a challenge for me. Throughout my school career, I learned by having my mother and friends read the syllabus to me; I forced myself to memorize it and what I didn’t get, which was most of it, I just didn’t get. I had no future because I just couldn’t grasp what was being taught to me. In twelve years of school, I couldn’t read a book […]
