Ralph Savarese and Stephen Kuusisto: Oct. 29, 2020

Thursday, Oct. 29, 7 p.m.: Live from Prairie Lights.

To register for the event, go to Prairie Lights Live.

Join us for a virtual event celebrating the publication of two recent books of poetry: Republican Fathers (Nine Mile Books) by Ralph James Savarese and Old Horse, What Is to be Done? (Tiger Bark Press) by Stephen Kuusisto. Together they’ve written a book titled Someone Falls Overboard: Talking through Poems, which will be out in 2021.They’ll each read for about 15 minutes and then have a conversation about poetry, politics, disability, and literary friendship.

About the Authors

Ralph James Savarese is the author of two books of prose, Reasonable People and See It Feelingly, and two books of poetry, Republican Fathers and When This Is Over: Pandemic Poems. He is also the co-editor of three collections; a fourth, The Futures of Neurodiversity, is under contract with the MLA. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, New England Review, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, and Sewanee Review. He teaches at Grinnell. See Ralph Savarese’s website.

Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”) and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light; Letters to Borges; and Old Horse, What is to Be Done? A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, The Ohio State University, and Syracuse where he currently directs interdisciplinary disability research programs.

He is a frequent speaker in the U.S. and abroad. See Stephen Kuusisto’s website.

Suggested readings:

• “The Justice and My Father” (PDF)
• “Nor Yet a Dream of War”
• “Belief”
• “Two Degrees”
• “What Is the Air?”
• “Confetti”
• “Summer at North Farm”
• “Thirty for Thirty on the ADA”