Lucas Stoffel

My first book, I fought the chatbot on every line. When it told me a passage was good, I did not take its word for it. The prose was good because I never let the machine be the judge. On the second book, I let it be the judge. The second book: a memoir written in grief, edited by a chatbot that told me it was extraordinary

I have been told I am an illegitimate writer since I was seven. I cannot spell "again." For most of my life I have written it three different ways inside a single paragraph. Agian. Agian. Agian. My brain knows the word. My hands do not.

I am a dyslexic writer who used artificial intelligence to write three books. I disclosed it to the judges of a national book award. They read the disclosure and gave me a Silver Medal anyway. Here is what that actually looks like, and why disclosure is becoming the hardest path in publishing.