“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…
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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…
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I was over the moon to learn that my first in-person book event for There Plant Eyes–to celebrate the paperback release on August 30–would be hosted by the radical Lower East Side bookshop, Bluestockings! So when I asked my friend Andy Slater, a Chicago-based sound artist to join me in conversation and he said “yes,” I was rocketed off to…
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New beginnings collide with old haunts in recent months as Alabaster and I settle back into New-York-City living. A sudden teaching gig landed me back at NYU, helping out a favorite former professor as the oldest TA in the world, . And on the other side of things, I was honored that the New York Times let me weigh in…
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In my last essay inspired by attending the NYC Disability Pride Parade, I presented a small rant on the dearth of actors with disabilities representing themselves on television. And I got to thinking about how, in a troubling landscape, I can say with as few sour grapes as possible, that the blind actor is pretty much non-existent, excepting of course…
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Last year I wrote about why Disability Pride Parades Matter, from a bookish perspective since I unfortunately did not make it to the parade. This year, I did make it and was very pleased to run into friends including my old pals from Lighthouse Guild Music School! They may never forgive me for flubbing my chance to distinguish the Lighthouse…
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