I usually avoid reading novels and short stories with characters who are blind. Too many fiction writers portray blind characters one-dimensionally — we’re either heroic or tragic, bumbling or, particularly lately, blessed with super-powers. But Anthony Doerr isn’t like other authors. One of the main characters in Doerr’s current best-selling novel All the Light We Cannot See is […]

Turns out I’m in good company when it comes to interviewing people without seeing what they look like. Laura Hillenbrand (award-winning author of Sea Biscuit and Unbroken) and Fresh Air’s Terry Gross were both quoted in a New York Times Sunday Magazine story recently saying they actually prefer interviewing people that way. The article explains […]

In honor of Thanksgiving, I asked seniors in my memoir-writing classes to write on the subject “Thanks, but No Thanks.” To explain what I was looking for, I said, “Say you were offered an opportunity, a job, a marriage proposal, a real estate purchase, an adoption, anything, and are sorry you refused that offer, you […]

Last Thursday I spoke to a U of I class in Champaign. Monday morning I spoke with second graders at Chicago’s Francis Xavier Warde School. Yesterday I spoke to visually-impaired adults at Blind Service Association. Each of these three presentations ended with a Q&A, which lead’s me to today’s quiz. Tell me if the following […]

Doretha was a soft-spoken woman with a velvety tenor voice. When she first introduced herself to our downtown Chicago memoir-writing class, she came right out and explained why she’d signed up. “My therapist told me to come.” We didn’t hear another word from Doretha for four or five weeks. She came to class, but she […]