Category: Nonfiction

Blindness as Creative Force – Fall 2026 News & Events

Dear readers, After relying on a barely accessible newsletter platform for almost a decade, I’ve decided to turn my jam-packed newsletters with carefully curated image descriptions into seasonal round-up posts at DrMLGodin.com and AromaticaPoetica.com, and just send out a simple, text-based email blast to alert readers. So here’s the Fall 2026 Blindness as Creative Force Newsletter! Please reach out and… Read more

First Month as an NYPL Cullman Fellow * Photo/Description Journal

From my first mornings entering the New York Public Library as the 2025-26 Jean Strouse Fellow in the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, I knew it would be a very happy year! Perhaps it was the five months away in so many new situations—MacDowell, Yaddo, San Francisco—learning to bumble about with Moses, that made it possible for me to… Read more

Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze * NYPL Public Lecture

*As a 2023-24 Diamonstein-Spielvogal Fellow at the New York Public Library, I was asked to give a public lecture in the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities on March 8, 2024 called: “Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze.” Below is the recording of the lecture—including questions from the star-studded audience!—followed by a cleaned-up transcript of my lecture… Read more

NYPL Works In Progress Talk with David Lowe, Photography Specialist

On October 19, 2023, I was honored to present my work-in-progress as a 2023-24 NYPL Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow at the New York Public Library. Thanks to Deirdre Donohue and David Lowe for supporting this talk with their brilliance and kindness! The entire talk with ASL interpreters is below as a Vimeo link and my lecture notes follow.     Face of… Read more

Blind Delights 1: Inspiration/Thanks Ross Gay!

A bit late to the party, but I just finished reading Ross Gay’s 2019 essay collection, The Book of Delights. I’m inspired. Hence pilfering the concept with a twist: blind delights! Like him, I have many things to delight in. Also like him, the opposite. He is black. I am blind. We each have a mountain of stereotypes and oppression… Read more

A Quartet of Image Descriptions for Paul Strand’s “Blind Woman” (1917)

A picture speaks a thousand words, so lay them on me! Paul Strand’s “Blind Woman” is the first photograph I wrote about as my writing sample for Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography, as part of my successful application to be a New York Public Library Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow this year. As I wrote in my proposal, image description is… Read more