• Half Iranian, half white American protagonist (who is into STEAM)
• Half Filipino, half white American bestie
• Child of Pakistani (Punjabi/Urdu speaking) immigrants major character
• Black American major character
• Nontraditional families (immigrant, interracial with large age gap between kids, divorced, and familial guardianship)
• Aspec main character
• Nonbinary major character using she/they and, later, they/them pronouns
• Pan major character
• Bi major character
• Gender nonconforming behavior
• Undiagnosed childhood anxiety and autism
• Aphantasia
• Major character with ADHD
• Two major characters with childhood depression

• Parental mental illness and long-term hospitalization
• Childhood mental, emotional, and materialistic/financial abuse from a guardian, including food withholding
• Mentions and consequences of bullying
• Racial prejudice directed mainly at a child
• Mentions of a dead parent
• Age-appropriate body horror
• Fungal and botany-related horror
• Spiders being creepy and Way Too Big
• Adults treating kids like crap
• Adults doing some Real Questionable Stuff

As a queer and trans author, by nature, the work I produce is queer in its sensibilities and worldview. The Glade is reflective of that. However, when it comes to representation that's expliclit on the page (beyond some background mention of queer people), only nonbinary representation is explored to some degree. A discerning reader will pull together the clues littered around that signal other characters' queerness, especially Pina's aromanticism. Still, I find it important to note this for both those readers who need covert representation and those who are seeking named representation.

Similarly, neurodivergence is clearly on the page even when not deliberately discussed. Anxiety is explicitly named (and aphantasia explicitly described), but autism, ADHD, and depression are not. I've made the choice to explicitly name the neurodivergences in the book publicly but want to give the same caveat as I do above. As a neurodivergent person (and a former neuroscientist), my characters necessarily reflect a variety of different neurotypes. However, not all characters are aware of how their own brains operate, especially children, given that many neurodivergences are normalized within families. This is the case in The Glade.