Faculty member Kenny Fries, a leading voice in the disability arts and disability studies world, talks about high standards, research, humor, and finding ways to be in the present time. A poet, memoirist and essayist, and also a librettist, he says that traveling and living internationally is “as necessary as blood.”  

“Most of my work has to do with disability or the body, but my goal is to have disability as part of the conversation about “mainstream” literature and also the conversation about diversity.”

Kenny shares his continuing connection to his former students (with some, as many as twenty years later), including three “really impressive poets” with new books out who were recently on campus for the Clockhouse Writers Conference.  His advice to students, including those with learning differences? “Put the [unique] way you think …your distinctive voice and identity…on paper.”

What is your distinctive voice and vision?

Music Credits: “Late Nights” by Ketsa, Album: Metamorphosis; “A Certain Lightness” by Blue Dot Sessions, Album: Migration; “Thoughtless” by Blue Dot Sessions, Album: Warmbody.

Find out more about Goddard’s low-residency Creative Writing program here.

Read more from Kenny, as well as other faculty, alumni and students from the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing community, at the blog The Writer in the World or at Kenny’s blog https://howwegettonext.com/@kennyfries