Imagine growing up unable to read then growing into someone whose life revolves around words. That’s William May’s story. Once a child who couldn’t make sense of the page, he is now a published poet.
William talks openly about growing up severely dyslexic, the frustration of trying to read, and the moment a special education teacher, Shirley Cohn, helped unlock that ability for him. As he put it, “I went from not being able to read at all to suddenly being off and running.”
He shares what it felt like to be told as a kid that he “wasn’t intelligent,” how his mother recognized his struggles early, and why handwriting is still physically painful due to dysgraphia. Yet those early challenges didn’t limit him—they shaped him. They gave him a deep love for language, a sense of magic around reading, and ultimately the desire to become a writer.