Reading Club Discussion Guide for ‘There Plant Eyes’

February is Low Vision Awareness Month, and I’m honored that There Plant Eyes was chosen as one of 3 Reading Club books by the NNLM (Network of the National Library of Medicine). Here’s the announcement, and here’s TPE featured plus other vision resources. Below is the discussion guide I created for them. I hope it will be useful for other… Read more

‘Ulysses’ and Joyce’s Blind Community * Excerpt from an Article by Dr. Cleo Hanaway-Oakley

“Ulysses at 100: Why Joyce was so Obsessed with the Perfect Blue Cover” is a delightful article at The Conversation by Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley. It’s not only a fun deep dive into the famous blue cover, but it’s also about Joyce’s interest in blindness and the blind community. It is in this context that There Plant Eyes is referenced!: Blindness… Read more

“Inspiration Porn Star” * Fiction First Published in ‘Artificial Divide’

“Inspiration Porn Star” is a raucously dark, debauched, and ill-tempered short story about a blind comedian published last year in Artificial Divide. This anthology, edited by Robert Kingett and Randy Lacey, was a first-of-its-kind own-voices collection of fiction by blind and visually-impaired writers. Several friends also have stories in there, including Alice Eakes, who makes some memorable appearances in There… Read more

TPE Book Celebration and Conversation with Steve Kuusisto and Elizabeth Bearden at NYU (In-Person & Online)

Co-sponsored by the Modern and Contemporary Colloquium and the Center for Disability Studies at NYU There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness (Pantheon, 2021) is now out in paperback! To mark the occasion, author M. Leona Godin (NYU) will be joined by Stephen Kuusisto (Syracuse University) and Elisabeth Bearden (University of Wisconsin, Madison) to read from their… Read more

“Revealing and Rewarding Work of Impressive Scholarship” * ‘There Plant Eyes” Review by Author Lazarus Belle

Every author knows how important reviews are, and although we all like to hate on Amazon, it’s a very good place for finding and publishing public reviews. Of course Goodreads is the other biggie. My friend and fellow author published this thoughtful review of There Plant Eyes (now out in paperback) in both places, and to show my appreciation (and… Read more

The TPE Ultraviolet G&T – Includes Recipe!

I’ve been brainstorming my There Plant Eyes Ultraviolet cocktail for over a year. Interviewing  writer and booktail mixologist , Lindsay Merbaum, for Aromatica Poetica plus the paperback release of There Plant Eyes on Aug 30, finally pushed me over the creative edge… The Ultraviolet Inspiration Ordinarily, debut authors don’t have a lot of say in the design process behind their… Read more