In his teens, Andrew Leland was diagnosed with a rare congenital condition that would eventually leave him blind. In in his new memoir, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “a wonderful cross-disciplinary wander,” Leland approaches his gradual sight loss from the perspective of an explorer, braiding anecdotes of professional and family life with deep research into the history of blindness and keen analysis of its resonance as a literary trope. The writer, podcaster, and longtime editor of The Believer magazine will discuss Country of the Blind with Shore Lit Founder Kerry Folan.

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Preceding the book talk from 5:00-6:00 pm, experience a self-guided “touch tour” of the contemporary marble sculpture exhibition Sebastian Martorana: Public/Private. As Andrew explains in a chapter that deals specifically with the experiences of blind people and visual art, these tours typically offer an opportunity for blind museumgoers to touch artwork that is off-limits to the general public.