In the Province of the Gods at Access Living of Metro Chicago

Kenny Fries will read from his new memoir IN THE PROVINCE OF THE GODS and talk with Susan R. Nussbaum, author of Good Kings Bad Kings, at Access Living of Metro Chicago.

In IN THE PROVINCE OF THE GODS, Kenny Fries embarks on a journey of profound self-discovery as a disabled foreigner in Japan, a society historically hostile to difference. As he visits gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he also discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and A-bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality are shaken, and he must find a way to reenter life on new terms.

Kenny Fries is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College and is the recipient of a prestigious Creative Capital grant.

For more information about the book, please visit: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5638.htm

Susan R. Nussbaum is a playwright, novelist and longtime disability rights activist. She won the 2012 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for her novel Good Kings Bad Kings. Two of her plays have been published: Mishuganismo in the anthology Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and No One As Nasty in Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights. She is most interested in creating authentic disabled characters and all of her plays, as well as her novel, feature disabled characters prominently.

As a disability rights activist, Nussbaum started one of the earliest groups for girls with disabilities, the Empowered Fe Fes. For her work with disabled girls over the years, she was named as one of 50 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World by the Utne Reader in 2008.

For more information about the event and Access Living of Metro Chicago, please visit: https://www.accessliving.org/