New Memoir Arrives Ahead of Dyslexia Awareness Month — From Former Merrill Lynch Senior VP Hid Diagnosis for 25 Years

OUTCAST: A Dyslexic in an Ivy League World publishes Sept. 29, 2026, ahead of October's national spotlight on dyslexia awareness.

BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, September 29, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- With October designated as national Dyslexia Awareness Month, Louisburg Publishing announces the September 29, 2026 release of OUTCAST: A Dyslexic in an Ivy League World, a memoir by Andrew Haigney. Haigney, a former Senior Vice President in Merrill Lynch’s Institutional Department, spent a quarter-century on Wall Street concealing from colleagues, clients, and superiors his severe dyslexia and lack of any higher education.

Diagnosed with dyslexia in fourth grade and later with ADHD in his forties, Andrew graduated last in his high school class and never earned a single college credit. Yet he went on to build a high-stakes career advising banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, and major private equity firms on complex investment strategies. He worked alongside Ivy League-educated colleagues who had no idea he was a functional illiterate.

"Nobody at Merrill Lynch knew. That was the point. September 29th, they find out," says Haigney.

Unlike much of the current public conversation around dyslexia, which Haigney argues is too centered on treating dyslexia as a "superpower," OUTCAST is built around triumph over extraordinary obstacles, battles, and hard-won lessons of a life spent navigating a world built for others. The book uses Haigney's own credential gap to deliver a structural critique of how Wall Street and elite corporate institutions evaluate talent.

"Most versions of this story would stop at Merrill [Lynch]," noted one advance reader. "The wronged child gets his marble lobby; the institution with the better stationery reverses the verdict of the institution with the chalkboard. Haigney’s life refuses the arrangement."

After decades on Wall Street and at the peak of his career, the imposter mask got too heavy and Haigney traded in his Beacon Hill lifestyle in search of a more authentic life. He packed his family into a custom tour bus previously owned by country music superstar George Strait and spent a year on the road before settling in rural Vermont, where he became an outspoken investor advocate and did the one thing his dyslexia told him was off limits – he became a writer.

OUTCAST is structured in three parts: School, Work, and Life. It arrives in paperback, hardcover, e-book, and audiobook format, narrated by veteran performer Malcolm Hillgartner. Early reviewers describe the narrative as evoking "the mischievous insider pleasure of Michael Lewis’s “Liar’s Poker” …but Haigney brings a different anxiety to the trading floor: the fear that admission itself may have been an administrative oversight.”
Haigney is available for interviews to discuss topics including what he calls the "gentrification" of dyslexia, corporate masking, navigating elite environments without traditional credentials, and finding one's own path through severe dyslexia.

About the Book
OUTCAST: A Dyslexic in an Ivy League World
Publisher: Louisburg Publishing
Publication Date: September 29, 2026
Formats: Paperback, Hardcover, E-book, Audiobook
BISAC Categories: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography / People with Disabilities

Media Contact
Louisburg Publishing – Boston, MA
info@louisburgpublishing.com

Andrew J Haigney
Louisburg Publishing
andrew@andrewhaigney.com
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