Category: about me

Smell Menagerie: ‘Aromatica Poetica’ Winter Newsletter

The AP Winter Newsletter features: Open submissions, talks and travel, exploring barnyards by nose, chocolates by touch, a soap/burgers story, and more… Dear friends and family, The new year always launches me into a gratifying state of cautious optimism. Thanks to a small burst of speaking invitations, I’m looking forward to connecting with some of you in person over the… Read more

“The Best Books on Blindness and the Brain” at Shepherd.com

The Best Books on Blindness and the Brain on Shepherd.com is a grateful nod to the authors that deepened the sciencey bits of There Plant Eyes! Oliver Sacks, John Locke, Lawrence Rosenblum, Jason Roberts, & @DavidEagleman—whose book Livewired came out after I’d finished TPE but surely would have been in there. Why I wrote this Blindness and the Brain list… Read more

‘There Plant Eyes’ Paperback Out Now * Includes Cover Image Description & Blurbs!

Oh, look what arrived in my email!: the paperback cover of There Plant Eyes – front cover lost its braille but gained a fantastic blurb by the incomparable Maggie Nelson… General #ImageDescription This is the publisher’s image of the back, spine, and front paperback covers of There Plant Eyes from left to right, but I’ll paste in the info more… Read more

#HappyBirthdayHelenKeller and Hello #DisabilityPrideMonth!

About 15 years ago I first learned that Helen Keller performed in vaudeville. As I discuss in There Plant Eyes, I was moonlighting as a performance artist with the Art Stars of the Lower East Side when I stumbled upon the delicious fact that Helen and Annie did the vaudeville circuit for 4 years (1920-24), I instantly knew it would… Read more

Colorful Hallucinogenic Pixelated Snow Fuzz & Other Things Blind People See

When I had central vision loss I never saw a black hole—any more than sighted people “see” their blind spots… Now that I’m totally blind, I see colorful hallucinogenic pixelated snowfuzz–still no black! I was curious to know what other bplindkind see, so I asked Facebook and here are some responses—consider adding yours in the comments below! What some blindkind… Read more

Footnote on ‘Invisible Child’ by Andrea Elliott

Andrea Elliott was recently announced as the Pulitzer winner in nonfiction for Invisible Child: poverty, survival, and hope in an American city (Random House, 2021). I was honored to have a conversation with her during the Virtual Monster Book Tour for There Plant Eyes. During that conversation and others over the past couple years, we’ve talked about visibility and invisibility.… Read more