Stephen Kuusisto

“Disability has long been defined in terms of illness. This medical model for disabled people overlooks the very real attitudinal barriers in society that are in reality the driving force behind handicapping people who have physical impairments. Are you disabled by the physical problem or the social one? In my lifetime the drama has moved from the medical model for accepting disability toward a broader consideration that the culture may be the biggest barrier faced by a disabled person.”

2021 Guggenheim Fellow

New York Times Notable Book

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Letter to Borges from London

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“Kuusisto tells the poignant story of a midlife rebirth that led to self-acceptance and also celebrates human/animal interdependence and a “companionship [that] was intimate and richer than poems.” An eloquent and heartwarming memoir.”

— Kirkus Reviews on Have Dog, Will Travel

“[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor.”

— New York Times on Letters to Borges

“Most of us see the layers of space, but Kuusisto, who has been legally blind since birth, hears them. In these vivid essays, the poet (Only Bread, Only Light) and memoirist (Planet of the Blind) indulges and investigates the active listening he deploys to navigate the world around him. He is a keen observer. A crowd is not a crowd to him; instead it is a series of sound points, indicating space, pace, rhythm and mood. The wind is just as complex, as it “carries fragments of noise from far places like an absentminded uncle who doesn’t remember what’s in his old suitcase.” Music is a constant companion, starting with trees tapping on windows, birds calling and his discovery of a Victrola in his grandmother’s dusty attic. At times, he lists sounds to guide the reader through his interpretation of a scene, as when he comes upon “four hundred drunken men pushing and cursing” in an airport in Tallinn, Estonia, their boots making the “metaphysical noise called ‘the edge of night.’ “ Through all these sounds and their meaning to him, Kuusisto reveals the nuance of the heard world, transporting the reader as he maps the aural landscape.”

— Publisher's Weekly on Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening

“[Kuusisto] is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor. He has written a book that makes the reader understand the terrifying experience of blindness and that stands on its own as the lyrical memoir of a poet.”

— New York Times on Planet of the Blind

Stephen Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is an acclaimed poet who has written extensively about his experience of blindness, most recently in the bestselling Have Dog, Will Travel (Simon & Schuster, 2018) which Temple Grandin praised as “A perceptive and beautifully crafted memoir.” His most recent book of poetry is Letter to Borges (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). Other books include his memoirs Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening (W.W. Norton & Co., 2006) and Planet of the Blind (Dial Press, 1997), which was a New York Times Notable Book, and the poetry collection Only Bread, Only Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2000). He is currently working on a collection of prose poems for Copper Canyon Press entitled Mornings With Borges as well as a collection of political poems about disability. He is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Literature.

Recognized by the New York Times as “a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor,” Kuusisto has made numerous appearances on programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline NBC, National Public Radio, and the BBC. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s, and Poetry.

When asked in an interview about his memoir, Planet of the Blind, ending on a sober note, he replied, “My memoir ends on a sober note when I talk about my own struggles with religious faith. Like Emily Dickinson I believe in Jesus, but I’m also angry with him. I grow tired of living in a riddle day after day. Why must we live in a world of occult charlatans? The balance resides in the liminal, ecstatic moments of animation — the book ends with a blind man and his dog dancing together and laughing at a superstitious crackpot. The book has a sober gaiety, I think.”

A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and The Ohio State University. Kuusisto has served as an advisor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and to the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC. He directs The Burton Blatt Institute’s interdisciplinary programs in disability at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship. His daily blog, Planet of the Blind, is read globally by people interested in disability and contemporary culture. He is a frequent speaker in the U.S. and abroad.

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