“If my time in Japan taught me anything, it is that in the ancient culture of Japan, unlike in the West, the idea of the actual, the original, does not seem to matter as much, or matter at all.”
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The New York Times publishes Kenny as one of ten poets in “Poetry is a Way of Being in the World that Wasn’t Made For Us.”
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“Work by important disabled writers goes unnoticed by both mainstream publishers and reviewers. Meanwhile, books by nondisabled writers about their disabled children or siblings are given space in what is considered ‘the mainstream.’”
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"In the summer of 1989, I began searching for the words with which to begin speaking about my own experience living with a congenital physical disability . . ." So begins Kenny's essay, "The Body's World: Writing the Body Different,” now published by LA Review of Books.
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The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, through a combination of conferences and residency programs, supports the work of scholars, artists, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners who share in the Foundation’s pioneering mission to “promote the well-being of humanity around the world.”
“The CMLP Firecracker Awards for Independently and Self-Published Literature spotlights books and magazines making a sparkling contribution to our literary culture, and publishers striving to introduce important voices to readers far and wide.”
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In the Province of the Gods is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir/Biography.
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"Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."
- Ford Madox Ford
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"Is this why I came to Japan? To ferry my dead across the Tamagawa?"
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"All is color and excess bordering on “kitsch,” for which there is no Japanese word."
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"These books move disability from the margins to the center, where they provide a critical lens to look at how we—disabled and nondisabled alike—live, or might live, our lives."
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"Japanese culture looks at impermanence as a part of life. . . It permeates so much of the culture from noh to butoh to garden design to the wonderfully crazy obsession with flowers, most evident to us in cherry blossom festivities."
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“Being disabled my entire life, I have yet to experience the kind of loss that MM must feel. To me, disability is the norm.”
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"I have always loved the way [Kenny Fries's} writing links the events of his own life with questions raised by the narratives of history. I had much I wanted to ask him about after reading In the Province of the Gods."
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"What makes a life worth living? Do looks, ability, and talent make your life more valuable than someone else's? Kenny Fries has made it his life’s work to understand just that."
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"For those of us who live with disabilities, when we think of access we mostly think of physical access: ramps, lifts, and technological aides. But cultural access is just as essential as physical access to an inclusive society."
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"Ultimately, Fries wrote 27 drafts, but it was not until the 23rd that the book finally found its form. . . . The finished book is less about disability in Japan than a meditation on how different cultures deal with impermanence and mortality."
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Passport Magazine calls In the Province of the Gods "a deeply resonant memoir that inspires gratitude in both writer and reader."
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Favorite book when you were a child? Book that changed your life? Kenny answers these and other questions.
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Watch and listen to two prominent writers with disabilities talk about disability, the body, Japan, and change.
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