Woody Brown, once told he would never speak or understand language, is publishing his debut novel "Upward Bound" this month. The 28-year-old from Monrovia, California, who was diagnosed with severe autism as a toddler, has overcome extraordinary odds to become a published author after graduating from UCLA and earning a master's degree from Columbia University.

Doctors believed Brown could not process language and advised his parents to stop talking to him in complex sentences. His mother Mary discovered he understood more than he could express when he became calm after she explained why they needed to stop at Target before getting lunch. At age 5, Brown learned to communicate by pointing at letters on a laminated card, spelling out words to answer questions.

His novel, which took months to complete at a rate of one paragraph per day, explores the lives of disabled people at an adult day care center in Southern California. The book has earned advance praise from authors including Paul Beatty, Roddy Doyle, and Mona Simpson. Beatty, who taught Brown at Columbia, praised the novel's range of characters and voices that "build on one another like a chorus."