August 8, 2024
6:30PM in the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library & Museum at Forbes Library
Forbes Library welcomes Andrew Leland— writer, audio producer, editor, teacher, and Northampton resident—for a discussion of his book The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight. Country of the Blind was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, Publishers Weekly and Lit Hub. This event will celebrate the release of the Paperback Edition by Penguin Books July 23rd. Books will be available for purchase.
Andrew will be joined in conversation by Pagan Kennedy, award-winning author of 11 books, NY Times columnist, teacher, NEA and MIT Fellow, journalist, and magazine contributor.
From Penguin/Random House:
A witty, winning, and revelatory personal narrative of the author’s transition from sightedness to blindness and his quest to learn about blindness as a rich culture all its own. We meet Andrew Leland as he’s suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: he’s midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from sightedness to blindness over years, even decades. He grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in. Soon— but without knowing exactly when—he will likely have no vision left.
Full of apprehension but also dogged curiosity, Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of being that awaits him: not only the physical experience of blindness but also its language, politics, and customs. He negotiates his changing relationships with his wife and son, and with his own sense of self, as he moves from his mainstream, “typical” life to one with a disability. Part memoir, part historical and cultural investigation, The Country of the Blind represents Leland’s determination not to merely survive this transition but to grow from it—to seek out and revel in that which makes blindness enlightening. Brimming with warmth and humor, it is an exhilarating tour of a new way of being.
Andrew’s recent published articles include a piece for New York Magazine on the life-changing accessibility features of the Apple Vision Pro, as well as a web feature for the New Yorker about Protactile—a way of communicating through touch, a political movement for DeafBlind autonomy, and (some argue) a new language in a new modality—that’s radically transforming the lives of DeafBlind people across the U.S. In 2022, he wrote about the complexities of acting blind on TV (and in his own life) for the New York Times Magazine. His writing has also appeared in the New York Review Daily, McSweeney’s Quarterly, the San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB magazine, the catalog for the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and elsewhere. Andrew has produced audio for a range of entities, including an interview with the DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark for the New Yorker Radio Hour; a story about disabled astronauts for Radiolab; and a story about reading technologies for the blind for 99 Percent Invisible. From 2013–2019, he hosted and produced the Organist, an arts-and-culture podcast, for KCRW.
This event will be live streamed via Forbes Library’s YouTube Channel.Forbes Library is committed to providing universal access to our events. Please contact us at 413-587-1017 or via email at info@forbeslibrary.org with any questions or requests.