“There are none so blind as those who will not see”
Conversations with professor Stephen Kuusisto are as rewarding as those with my sister Rita, also a blind writer. Like Rita, Kuusisto (KOOZ-is-tow) shares knowledge and insight on creativity, disability, and heroes from Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer to virtuoso Enrico Caruso.
Kuusisto teaches creative nonfiction and says it “utilizes techniques of fiction or lyrical writing to tell true stories. My literary heroes—Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, William Carlos Williams, Joan Didion—offer readers a marriage of spiritual intelligence and social conscience.”
Entertainer of the spiritA Nobel Literature Prize winner, Singer stated: “The storyteller of our time ... must be an entertainer of the spirit ... not just a preacher of social and political ideals. The serious writer must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation.” Singer was echoing the aesthetic and political intelligence of Plato, who argues art must delight (and) instruct.
His very premature birth resulted in blindness for Kuusisto. Raised in New Hampshire and his father's native Finland, he took a high school course taught by a University of Iowa (UI) Writers' Workshop graduate. That led him to "jazzy, contemporary poetry." Later, he attended the workshop and since has been “preoccupied” with literary writing.
Bridge the goalsA Fulbright scholar, Kuusisto returned to UI in the Carver College of Medicine and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to “bridge the goals of disability advocates and health professionals.”
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