Read reviews of Kenny's books, interviews and conversations with Kenny Fries, and recently published essays and poems by Kenny.
Kenny’s reading with Jayrôme C. Robinet, part of “Queer as German Folk,” a project “celebrating the multilayered histories of Germany’s and America’s diverse LGBTIQ+ communities” is now online. Goethe-Institut in North America in collaboration with its Goethe Pop Ups and the Schwules Museum Berlin (SMU) were hosts for the event, which was moderated by Dr. Robert D. Tobin, Henry J. Leir Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures at Clark University.
Read MoreIn “Without Us: Disabled Writers 30 Years after the ADA", Kenny writes “Despite the essential need for disabled writers to transform the understanding of disability and disabled lives, in the thirty years since the ADA’s passage, in literary circles, there remains a lack of representation of disabled people in gatekeeper positions and in our literature’s pages.” Read the full essay here.
Read MoreDiversability has named Kenny as an honoree on their inaugural D-30 Disability Impact List. The 30 honorees represent 10 countries; Gender identity: 63% female, 27% male, 10% nonbinary; Black: 33%, non-Black people of color: 47%, LGBTQIA+: 27%.
Read MoreKenny has been awarded a 3-year multi-project grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. He will work on various projects in collaboration with artists and institutions around the world with the goal of using his privilege as a pioneer in disability arts to foster an enduring connection between generations of disabled artists. Collectively, these projects will not only fill historical and cultural gaps but also look at the historical and contemporary importance of disability culture. Kenny says, "This has become a more urgent goal as the current coronavirus pandemic has brought to the surface the vulnerability of those who live with disabilities caused by the lack of knowledge and misunderstanding of disabled lives."
Read MoreKenny has been awarded the Some Serious Business (#SSB AWAY) residency in Tuscany, where he will work on “Annunciations,” an essay that will be part of Frida Kahlo’s Leg: Essays on Disability, Role Models, and Representation.
Read MoreParaquad magazine translates “Crossing Borders While Disabled” into French for the spring 2020 issue.
Read MoreKenny is interviewed by Isabel Ehrlich about the intersectionality of anti-Semitism, in conjunction with his appearance on the Intersectional Anti-Semitism panel at the Schwules Museum.
Read More"Unlike the Holocaust, there are no T4 survivors. We know about T4 and its aftermath mainly through medical records and from the perpetrators. Aktion T4 does not have its Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. That is the main reason I write about what happened to disabled people during the Third Reich." Read Kenny’s essay “Before the ‘Final Solution’ There Was a ‘Test Killing’” published in The New York Times.
Read MoreKenny’s essay “Why We (Don’t) Remember: On the 80th Anniversary of Aktion T4” is up at The Believer.
Read MoreKenny’s essay, “The Nazi’s First Victims Were The Disabled,” is included in About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of Te New York Times, edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, with an introduction by Andrew Solomon, published by Norton/Liveright. You can read the essay here.
Read MoreCurated by Kenny Fries, “Disability Futures,” is a series of essays by five writers who dig into the ways that disability is shaping our lives — and our futures.
Read MoreKenny’s award-winning In the Province of the Gods has been translated into Japanese by Masataka Furuhata and publshed by Fukuryusha in Japan.
Read MoreFrom “Inaccessible Airways”: “‘That is your legs gone. It is a basic human right,’ explained journalist Frank Gardner in March, 2018, as he recounted being left on a plane for more than an hour and a half after landing, because Heathrow Airport staff could not find his wheelchair.”
Read More“Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many of my nondisabled American friends often blithely talk about leaving the country and settling elsewhere. Often, I read Facebook posts about their intentions to move,. . .When I post a comment mentioning the difficulties that a person with a disability faces when immigrating, the few replies are basically “I never knew.”
Read MoreIn honor of Kenny’s reading in Mexico City, four of his poems were published by tallerigutur.com in Spanish translations by Maria Vázquez Valdez and Andrés Millán Calhoun.
Read More“What do teacups have to do with religion? . . . It is upon these teacups that Cunningham dances—yes, you’ve read that right, she dances on teacups—as she upends our preconceptions about both religion and disability.”
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