I’ve been writing without vision for more than 25 years. Next month, at Northwestern University’s Summer Writers’ Conference, I’m going to try teaching people who can see how to do it, too: Smelling is Believing: Using Your Other Senses — Beth Finke Writer Beth Finke is blind, and her in-class exercises encourage writers to set […]

Last year 61 litters – 470 puppies — were born at the Seeing Eye breeding station. That’s a lot of puppies to name. The Seeing Eye gives the dogs in each litter names that start with the same letter of the alphabet, and once a puppy is named, that name can’t be used again until […]

I assign a topic to the seniors in the three memoir-writing classes I lead each week, the writers go home to write about that topic, and when they return the next week, they read their essays out loud. Written copies don’t get passed around to fellow writers, which means that during class everyone has to, […]

I started modeling nude for art students the year I turned 40. The unemployment rate of people who are blind was – and still is – around 70%, and back then the University of Illinois art department was the only place willing to hire me. Taking my clothes off for college students wasn’t exactly a […]

Hi folks, here’s the first of my substitute blog appearances. Hope you’ll bear with me while Beth’s in her residency at the Vermont Studio Center.–Mike So, Beth and I were in Montreal before we dropped her in Vermont. Everything about our Quebec weekend was fabulous. Fantastic food, charming people–and some great artwork–in our hotel! But more […]