In this warm and gloriously candid memoir about ADHD, queerness, love, and everything nobody thought to explain, CJ DeBarra – Irish journalist, non-binary West Cork exile, and lifelong owner of a brain that refused to behave – asks whether reaching their mid-thirties might finally be enough time to understand themselves.

Diagnosed with ADHD at eleven in a small West Cork village, CJ was given a label but never an explanation. Why did friendships keep breaking down? Why did relationships burn out? Why did their body and heart never seem to want the same things at the same time? Careening from art college to recession-era Dublin to Nottingham – falling hard, loving deeply, and only recently beginning to join the dots – CJ arrives, two decades later, at the question that should have been answered long ago: why hadn't anyone told them?

Part memoir, part guide, NeuroQueer fearlessly explores the raw realities of heartbreak, desire and queer identity, while shedding light on the alarmingly low diagnosis rates for women, transgender, and non-binary individuals. CJ draws on academic research, medical studies and the lived experience of other queer ADHD people to ask what might have been different if someone had told them sooner – and demands better for everyone still waiting to be told.



CJ DeBarra (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent lesbian author and journalist from West Cork, who emigrated to Nottingham in 2012. In 2022, CJ founded the Notts Queer History Archive (NQHA), a community-led, project that preserves and documents LGBT+ history from Nottingham, spanning 1770 to 2026, and is held at Bishopsgate Institute (London) and Sparrows' Nest (Nottingham). They are currently completing a PhD at Nottingham Trent University and working on a book about radical queer archiving. CJ has just been announced as the recipient of a research residency developed in partnership with the British Film Institute (BFI), hosted by BACKLIT Gallery, Nottingham. Working across BFI REPLAY and BACKLIT's Alfred House archive, the residency will see CJ develop a research-led project exploring how archives are accessed, interpreted, and activated, with a particular focus on underrepresented narratives. The residency unfolds across Nottingham and London, culminating in a public outcome at BACKLIT Gallery later this year.