25 March 2010

A few tidbits ... MEN WITH THEIR HANDS ...

Hello ...

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind (play rewrites, rehearsals, two presentations in Columbus, Ohio, performances of three of my plays, etc. to give you a rough idea), but I just had to share a lovely review of my novel MEN WITH THEIR HANDS from the web site OUT IN PRINT. Please check it out!

I'll be in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday April 10th (10 a.m. to 11 a.m.; please note this is the NEW time) to give a reading from three of my Deaf gay books: MEN WITH THEIR HANDS, ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, and MUTE. Where, exactly? Stonewall Library, of course! It will be voice-interpreted for those who don't know ASL, of course. If you're in Fort Lauderdale or the nearby Miami, please show up. I'd love to meet y'all!

A few days later, on April 15th, there will be a local book club discussing my novel MEN WITH THEIR HANDS right here in the Twin Cities. It's unfortunately not open to the public, so if you want to get in touch with the coordinator and RSVP, please let me know and I'll pass on his email address to you. The only requirement is that you HAVE to have read my novel first because they'll be discussing the book in detail. It should be a fun experience to see what people think of my little tome.

Spring's becoming clearer here in Minnesota every day, but I won't quite believe it until the residue of salt and gravel have been swept away from the streets ... Gotta scoot!

Raymond

14 March 2010

What? An interview with moi as a Deaf poet?

Hello ...

This is an excerpt from a long interview I've done with Wordgathering, a fantastic online journal focusing on disability and literature. (I hope I haven't babbled too much!)

Wordgathering: Raymond, you are such a Renaissance person – a poet, playwright, translator, film maker, novelist and essayist – that it is hard to know exactly just where to begin, but one thing that I find particularly interesting is your work in translating the work of Clayton Valli [an ASL poet] and making it accessible to the non-ASL public. Can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like?

RL [Raymond Luczak]: When I first saw Clayton, I was an 18-year-old student in the New Signers Program (NSP) which I took for three weeks at Gallaudet University prior to becoming a freshman there. By this point I had been writing uninformed (and uniformly) bad poetry for seven years. I had never questioned the unspoken assumption that poetry was the domain of hearing people until our ASL teacher informed us that an ASL poet was coming to our class that afternoon. "ASL poet"? I knew ASL, and I knew poetry (or so I'd thought at the time), but together? How would that work?

Wanna read more? The rest of this interview is at this link.

They also have a very thoughtful review of my memoir Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life at this link.

Please check it out, and let me know what you think! Have a great week, all!

Raymond