Dr. M. Leona Godin (pronounced like French sculptor Rodin) is the author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness (Pantheon Books, 2021), which The New Yorker called a “thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy.” She is honored to be the 2025-26 Jean Strouse Fellow at the NYPL Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and her work has received support from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and an NYPL Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship. Her writing can be found in such places as The New York Times, ARTnews, and Literary Hub. For more of her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, check out her list of publications.
Godin is the founder of Aromatica Poetica, an arts and culture laboratory for the advancement of smell and taste. And she creates scented/tactile performance journeys. Her current work explores the rich potentials of sensory translation and disability aesthetics, challenging ocularcentric expectations and celebrating multisensory experiences.
She is thrilled to be working on a blind-centric musical with Drama Club Productions. Learn more about her scented and unscented performance adventures HERE.
And find a list of her keynotes, classes, and conversations HERE.
Follow her on IG, FB, & X: @DrMLGodin
Leona is represented by Markus Hoffmann at RHA Literary.
Finally, in case you’re wondering, M. Leona Godin was born with the birth name Michelle Leona Goodin–but if you call her by the “M” word, she’ll not talk to you anymore. Check out “Me by Any Other Name,” for more on the momentous name shift.
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