Blair Fell joins Book Gang to discuss The Sign for Home, exploring the DeafBlind experience and a moving journey of autonomy and connection in this backlist feature.
Blair Fell joins Book Gang to discuss The Sign for Home, exploring the DeafBlind experience and a moving journey of autonomy and connection in this backlist feature.
Book Gang welcomes Blair Fell, acclaimed playwright, television writer, essayist, and ASL interpreter, to discuss his heartfelt and eye-opening novel, The Sign for Home. Fell’s unique life experience—including decades as an ASL interpreter for the Deaf and DeafBlind communities—shapes this deeply immersive story.
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Sign for Home is a funny, moving, and transformative read that will leave you curious and inspired. I’m thrilled to celebrate this unforgettable debut as part of this year’s Summer Reading Guide backlist feature and to honor the community it serves. Don’t miss how Blair’s story left such an impression on a reader that they changed their will after reading it.
In this rich, humorous, and moving conversation, we discuss:
📚 Writing from Lived Experience: Fell shares what it means to craft a character as complex as Arlo, drawing from his personal career as an interpreter and from interviews with members of the DeafBlind community. Discover how authentic representation and the many years of drafting shaped every page of this coming-of-age story.
📚 The Ethics and Intimacy of Interpretation: Learn about the real-world team dynamics, physical demands, and ethical dilemmas facing ASL interpreters, and how these play out in Arlo’s story. Fell’s insider details—from tag-team interpreting to nuanced moments of tactile signing—bring the profession vividly to life.
📚 Crafting Voice and Language: Fell’s inventive narrative choices mirror the rhythms of ASL, with Arlo’s dialogue rendered in a unique cadence and interpreters’ speech in standard English. Explore how these stylistic decisions deepen readers’ immersion and illuminate the power of language.
Meet Blair Fell
Blair Fell writes and lives in New York City. His television work includes Queer as Folk and PBS’s California Connected. He’s written dozens of plays, including The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, the award-winning Naked Will, and the cult miniseries Burning Habits. His essays have appeared in HuffPost, Out, Daily News (New York), and more. Fell is a two-time winner of the Doris Lippman Prize in Creative Writing, including for an early draft of the USA Today best-seller Disco Witches of Fire Island, a RuPaul book club pick and Lambda Award finalist. His debut novel, The Sign for Home, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was selected as an Indie Next and Indie’s Introduce book by the American Booksellers Association. Blair has also worked as an actor, producer, ASL interpreter, and director. He lives in Jackson Heights, NY (Queens, New York City).
Temporary Show Notes Location with Transcript (Apologies for the web issues today!)
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The Sign For Home by Blair Fell
Disco Witches of Fire Island by Blair Fell
The Two Wills by Blair Fell
The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff
Sarah Damoff - The Bright Years Podcast Interview
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham
True Biz by Sara Nović
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Book Gang Podcast Transcript: The Sign for Home Brings the DeafBlind Experience to Life with Blair Fell
Blair Fell (00:00)
My name is Blair Fell. I am the author of The Sign for Home, as well as two other books that we won't be talking about today called Disco Witches of Fire Island, which is out now by Alco Press and the upcoming The Two Wills, which will be coming out at the end of the summer beginning of fall.
INTRO MUSIC
Amy’s Warm Introduction: Hey, Book Gang! Blair Fell’s debut, The Sign For Home, hit store shelves in 2022, but only made its way to my book stack this year. The heart of Fell’s story is Arlo’s lived experience—born Deaf, he soon faced night blindness and, as years passed, a gradual loss of his sight. By the time we meet him, his right eye is blind, his left fading, and he relies on two-hand tactile sign language to connect to the world around him. At 23, living with Usher syndrome type 1, Arlo’s journey is shaped by his Jehovah’s Witness upbringing and the years spent under the watchful eye of his domineering uncle, which leaves little room for personal growth or exploration.
Everything changes when Cyril—a gay man in his forties—accepts a higher-paying position at the Abilities Institute, tasked with interpreting for Arlo. Though seasoned, Cyril still remembers his nerve-racking first experience as a tactile interpreter: helping a woman process her daughter’s death, an encounter that left him emotionally shaken in his early days as a translator. Despite the difficult memories, the offer is too good to pass up as he plans his next chapter.
Interpreters should not work alone for long periods, and Fell notes that any gig lasting over an hour and involving incessant talking requires a team. I am sure it comes as no surprise that brains start to miss things after just 20 minutes of non-stop interpreting, and sign language interpreters are at great risk of repetitive stress injuries, so they switch on and off every 20 minutes to keep the brain fresh, the body safe, and the message accurate. It’s why Cyril finds himself playing tag-team with a strict woman from the church as the two navigate translating in very different ways, while Cyril builds a world of autonomy for his client against this other reluctant force.
When Arlo receives a college writing assignment that stirs up long-buried memories and questions around someone he once knew and loved, romantic suspense is woven into the story as Cyril offers encouragement, at times in ways that are questionable, but always out of love for the client Together, they embark on a journey filled with obstacles and revelations, as Arlo seeks to assert his autonomy and embrace the full possibilities of his own life—beyond the boundaries others have set for him.
I found the original hardback copy on my library shelf, endorsed by our past show guest Laurie Frankel, whom we recently celebrated for Enormous Wings. That jacket copy promised a seemingly straightforward romance with a simple list titled “People Who I (Arlo Dilly) Can Love and Date,” on the back. When I opened the book and sank into the funny, heartwarming story, wholly immersive thanks to the author who narrates his own book, the romance felt like a backdrop to a vivid coming-of-age story.
Fell’s stylistic choices immerse us in Arlo’s world: Arlo’s dialogue is rendered with dropped verbs and a cadence that echoes the structure and rhythm of ASL itself, while the interpreters’ speech flows in standard English. Reminiscent of Sara Novic’s True Biz, Fell guides readers through the intricacies of signing—using italics and gentle explanations to help us truly see and feel the language on the page. If you connect with Blair’s voice today on our show, the author also narrates his own audiobook and does a truly phenomenal, confident job guiding the reader through the experience. I loved my immersive read, pairing the library's paper copy with his assured narration.
Blair worked as an ASL interpreter for the Deaf since 1993 and attended Gallaudet University, the only liberal arts university in the world for the Deaf, as a hearing “special student.” His acknowledgments thank the DeafBlind and Deaf and Low-vision individuals who allowed him to interview them by email, through in-person Tactile interviews, or both, to craft an authentic depiction of his character, Arlo, and his rich interior world that blooms from the page as he navigates the world as a DeafBlind young man.
There is a lot of boy humor in this story; the hormones are raging for these boys, and you will encounter those on the page. And while the story promised romance, I think what made this story feel intimate is tactile signing itself and the intimacy these moments require between the men. Arlo relies heavily on scent and touch, which come through on the page as he feels his interpreters' hands to gather intel (old, young, rough, soft) and tries to process the world through these other senses. Where the prose shines, though, are the scenes where Cyril struggles. As they pore over the Walt Whitman poem for Arlo’s class, for example, Cyril faces one of his toughest tasks: translating Leaves of Grass and explaining the word sublime in the poem.
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, this novel left me changed—curious, moved, and eager to learn more about the DeafBlind experience. I found myself diving into solo research, wanting to understand the world Fell conjured so vividly for his readers. Tracing his journey from this funny, heartfelt debut to everything that’s followed, I’m grateful for the window he’s opened and the stories he continues to tell. It brings me great joy to introduce him as a storyteller on Book Gang and celebrate this backlist title and this story, the first of three novels that Blair has now written.
If you’re new here, hi! I’m Amy Allen Clark, the voice behind the Book Gang podcast, and I’m so happy to have you. This show celebrates debuts, backlist favorites, and under-the-radar book gems. It’s a dream to continue my full immersion into the 2026 Summer Reading Guide this year as we celebrate some of my favorite authors featured in the guide. In case you missed it, we have three incredible episodes for streaming: Kayla Rae Whitaker for Returns & Exchanges, which hit store shelves last week; Christina Baker Kline for The Foursome; and Sarah Damoff for The Burning Side.
This special guide is available for purchase, offering a handpicked collection of 70 carefully selected titles—upcoming releases, buzzy debuts, and new-to-me backlist treasures (like this one)—across 57 pages designed to help you build your perfect summer stack. You will receive it as an instant download for $7, and that purchase allows us to keep our lights on at Book Gang.
It’s time to announce our annual Pride Book Club Pick for June, where we will be celebrating an absolute book gem: Woodworking by Emily St. James. Woodworking is a smart, moving, and unforgettable debut about identity and the courage required to step into yourself fully. Erica, a closeted trans high school teacher in a small South Dakota town, has spent her life quietly carrying the weight of her truth — until Abigail, a spiky, outspoken trans teen, arrives and sparks a connection that challenges everything she has hidden.
Through their messy, complicated, and budding friendship, Erica confronts long-denied desires, small but revolutionary acts of self-expression, and the question of who she might become if she dared to live openly. Woodworking is an achingly hopeful Pride Month pick that helps humanize an experience that often feels reduced to sensationalized headline news. We will gather on June 25th at 8 PM ET for our Zoom deep dive with my warm, multigenerational book club, where all are welcome for thoughtful conversation! Membership is just $5 a month, with a 10% discount if you sign up for a year.
As you know, in every podcast show, I make a fun, immersive book list to browse, and in honor of The Sign for Home, I'm sharing a new book list: 18 Books With Disabled Characters. As a member of the disability community, I loved putting this together, featuring some of my favorite selections with authentic representation, navigating both the joys and the challenges of daily life for these characters. Unfortunately, the site has been under attack from an AI bot, and our web host is working hard to restore it. In the meantime, I am making the list available for free to browse on Patreon. Patrons can download a printable checklist and join us for a spoiler-filled chat with Blair, where we dig into the book’s second half and perhaps get a bit sidetracked with Shakespeare.
Now, let’s meet this week’s guest: Blair Fell writes and lives in New York City. His television work includes Queer as Folk and PBS’s California Connected. He’s written dozens of plays, including The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, the award-winning Naked Will, and the cult miniseries Burning Habits. His essays have appeared in HuffPost, Out, Daily News (New York), and more. Fell is a two-time winner of the Doris Lippman Prize in Creative Writing, including for an early draft of the USA Today best-seller Disco Witches of Fire Island, a RuPaul book club pick and Lambda Award finalist. His debut novel, The Sign for Home, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was selected as an Indie Next and Indie’s Introduce book by the American Booksellers Association. Blair has also worked as an actor, producer, ASL interpreter, and director. He lives in Jackson Heights, NY (Queens, New York City).
If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a review on iTunes—it’s a quick, free way to support what we do. And to our patrons who keep the lights on at Book Gang: may every space you step into make you feel included and made just for you. I’m so grateful! Thank you for supporting human creators in a world turned upside down by AI. Now let’s get chatting!
TRANSITION MUSIC
Amy Clark (00:19)
Blair, I'm so excited to introduce your writing to our readers. And I was trying to come up with a really great icebreaker, but right before we went to record, you had sent me an updated bio and I want to talk about something special that got added to your bio recently. Can you tell our listeners about what's happening with you?
Blair Fell (00:40)
Yes, I'm very excited that my novel Disco Witches of Fire Island is a Lambda Award finalist at this year's Lambda Awards in Best Gay Romance. So I'm pretty excited about that and feel really honored. It's a good group. There's five finalists and we find who wins in June, but I'm just like happy to be a finalist. It's pretty exciting.
Amy Clark (01:04)
Yeah, it's my Oscars. I always go through all of the award winners and the finalists that are announced because it's so fun to curate a book list around what's been chosen. And it's very exciting to get to celebrate your very first book on here. We wanted to loop readers in on your writing career and I thought this would be a good place to start. But my original icebreaker, which I will be curious if you will have a good answer for me, is that one of Cyril's toughest tasks is translating leaves of grass and explaining the word sublime in the poem. And I wondered what was the most challenging thing you've ever had to explain through signing in your career.
Blair Fell (01:44)
Well, yeah. mean, that's like a real... I have another scene in the book where interpreters, like the interpreters who are kind of at loggerheads, the two interpreters that work with the main character Arlo, and where they hear in the classroom, they're like, okay, we're going to read a poem. Every interpreter is like,God, kill me now. Because poems...
Sign language interpreting is not word for word interpreting. It's, you need to know the message and the meaning in order to be able to express it. Well, we all know when you read a poem, generally poems right away, they're not instantly understandable, but even worse than doing a poem and interpreting a poem is when they're like, okay, who wants to read?
Now, if you've been in a college class, people reading out loud generally suck. like especially when they're reading a poem, you know, there'll be challenges with just if they're not native English speakers, accents, students tend to talk really softly, all these things on top of you have to understand the meaning of a poem. So that's always my least favorite thing.
My worst interpreting experience was I was actually working in Ireland, an amazing job. And last minute they're like, we want you to interpret this play at the Alley Theater. And we would get no rehearsal. And then we were allowed to read the play, but no rehearsal. And it's really hard to do this. When you do play interpreting, you get the script, you work on it for weeks. We got no rehearsal. You're doing it like in two days. You can read the script and you're not usually interpreting every 20 minutes, 15 or 20 minutes you switch because the brain stops working really well interpreting after 20 minutes.
Well, they're like, yeah, you're not allowed to have a team up there and you're not allowed to switch out. So you can only switch out at intermission. So someone has to do the whole first act. Okay, all these horrible, horrible things. Put on top of this working class Irish accents. Okay, but this is still not even the worst thing. We get up there, I'm sitting up there, I'm doing the first act. Luckily, the deaf student likes me. He's asked me to go to Ireland with him. I'm sitting there, thick Irish accents. I can't hear them. I'm like, what's wrong? I can't hear them. And I'm just, I hear a word. I squeeze it out of my hands, but I'm not understanding what they're saying. Sweat. Big bright light on me right next to the sweat pouring down my face. I'm like, I'm like so angry, upset and feeling like the worst interpreter in the world. Intermission comes I'm like, what the F happened? And then I learn I'm sitting behind the sound system. The sound systems in front of me.
I can't hear anything. It's not just like I'm old and deaf. It's like I can't hear anything. Plus they have working class Irish accents. Plus I've had no rehearsal. It was the worst experience ever.
That's my nightmare interpreting experience. But like in generally interpreting, poems are really, really, really hard to interpret just because you need to know the meaning. So you need to actually put work in it. But in a classroom setting, it's like last minute, we're reading this poem you've never read before, and we're going to have a kid in the class read it that can barely read and has a really thick accent and talks softly. So it's just a nightmare.
Amy Clark (05:04)
My gosh, well you did it well. I loved trying to imagine how I would describe a word like sublime and it was just really fun to see that process and what that looked like. Obviously I want to start at the top.
Looking through your bio is very fun and you have done so many different kinds of things. You've been in theater, you've done television, essay writing, all of these things before publishing a novel. What was the moment when you realized that this story needed to become a novel rather than something like a play or a screenplay where you were already in that playground?
Blair Fell (05:56)
That's a great question. It is so interesting. I never even thought about writing novels. Novelists in my mind were like, you know, they were my gurus. They were the people that I worshiped. And I wanted to actually have a lover as a writer. I never thought of myself as a writer. That was just something I admired so much.
I had been writing a bit for television in Los Angeles and I missed New York and I came back and I decided not to pursue TV anymore when I came back here because it's a much harder place to pursue TV writing in New York, but I love New York. And I saw a play with a deaf character and the second act wasn't very good and I thought, well, I have an idea for something and I sat down to write a play because I had been a playwright before I wrote for television and it didn't want to be a play. It so clearly wanted to be fiction and I'm like but I don't know how to write fiction.
So I just started writing. I got into an MFA program. It's all much, much later in life. This all happened to me. And I got into a writing group, which was the most important thing that ever happened to me. I still belong to this writing group today. We meet every week. And I just was like, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do my life as a writer anymore. So why not try? What the hell?
And so I just started writing this novel, you know, one word at a time, one sentence at a time. And that's how it also transformed greatly from the initial idea I had. I kind of just like leaned on the first time as an interpreter. So I had been an interpreter. I became an interpreter right when I decided to become a writer or playwright. When I was 29, I started interpreting and I started writing. And probably around maybe when I was 32, I was just shoved into a job and it's kind of like how Cyril in the book experiences that, is like, my god, I suck, I don't know anything about tactile interpreting, which is interpreting ASL into the hand of someone who's DeafBlind versus pro-tactile, which is a language that comes from the DeafBlind community, which I talk a bit about in the book.
But anyway, so just like I'm signing into this person's hand, I'm feeling utterly, you know unqualified to be doing this, but this is something that is not unusual to happen. And the DeafBlind person is amazing. They're understanding everything I'm saying and beyond. They're perceiving stuff that's happening in the room through my hands that I feel like I'm not even expressing. And it just kind of blew me away how much they could understand from what I was doing when I really didn't know the ins and outs of DeafBlindness or tactile interpreting.
And that's kind of was something that inspired me to write this book. also to then working more with DeafBlind as I went along in my career, just there's this world that happens that even deaf people, regular sighted deaf people don't know. The hearing sighted world doesn't know. Both the job of being an interpreter, but also this world of deaf blindness and what they're perceiving. They have this huge, giant world that they're living that, unless it's expressed, no one knows about. I kind of wanted to, one, expose what it is to be an interpreter, but also to bring forth some of these stories and voices of these DeafBlind people. So people kind of get this isn't just like, when you close your eyes and clog your ears, that's not what it is to be DeafBlind. And there's also obviously a range of DeafBlindness. But I just was really curious to like discuss that world, but also, you know, just other things came along that like fascinated me.
One thing I like to talk about is like I'm an extremely vain person. I always have been and so much has been based on visual and auditory things as far as desire and attractiveness. And this is one of the other main inspirations for the book is I had a friend, a DeafBlind friend who had me help him with his dating profile on a gay dating site and he actually had some pictures he took of himself, which you won't be surprised weren't very good. So I retook his pictures and help him rewrite his bio, but then he couldn't, he had like limited low vision. And so he couldn't really navigate these dating sites because they were filled with pop-ups and visual noise, they were not accessible sites, so he would have me go on and answer the emails, field the people that were, you know, contacting him. I’d send this formal thing that says, hey, I'm not on here very much. If you could contact me by this phone number, because on his phone he would have, and through just text, he would have accessibility tools that he could use that he couldn't use on the site.
So I kind of became this middleman and just became very interested in what he desired. He's someone that, like Arlo in the novel, has Usher syndrome, type 1, which is something where he was born deaf and had vision, but then when he was young, began to experience night blindness, then bit by bit his peripheral vision got smaller and smaller until he could just see a little bit of vision through like kind of one spot in his vision field, but then there's all these other it's it's called retinitis pigmentosa is the is the condition that people with Usher syndrome get. Which you know ends up, you know, bringing on blindness of various degrees.
But he had vision at one point. He had this, he, this particular person had a visual idea of people that he remembered, but then would eroticize these other things about them. To jump into like another question people have is like, I interviewed a ton of DeafBlind people for this book, probably about nine different DeafBlind people, gay, straight, male, in this and, and there was all this just different ways of ways they would eroticize people and fall in love with people.
One of my main informants about, and I use this in the book, he had no interest in a woman's head at all. He's like, that's just skin and bone to me. I really eroticize a woman's hands and her wrists. And he was very adamant, he hated sweaty hands. It really bothered him. But really was the content of what the woman had to say and less so about what a face would be like to him because he lost his vision fairly early on in his life.
Yeah, so they were kind of the things that motivated me to make this a novel. It was just these ins and outs, but again, I knew nothing about writing a novel. So it was really, it took me a long time, a really long time actually. I probably worked for eight years on The Sign for Home and because I didn't know I could do it. I wrote 800 pages. Yeah.
Amy Clark (13:24)
Yeah. Blair, this is a big book as it is. Like, this is crazy.
Blair Fell (13:34)
Yeah, I, well, I started like, I guess I started, you know, in the classroom, because in the classroom, like, well, what was he, what were his parents like? So I started with his parents, like his parents' story and what happened with his parents. And I'm a, I call it a bricolage writer, just whatever's around me I throw into the book. And so the summer I started writing this, one of my team interpreters was a Jehovah's Witness, an ex-Jehovah's Witness.
A lot of interpreters in New York are Jehovah's Witnesses. We're either gay, like these political feminists or Jehovah's Witnesses in New York, it seems. And she was an ex-Jehovah's Witness and she was telling me some nightmares of growing up. And I'm like, hmm, I wanted Arlo to be from a fundamentalist Christian family, which is, I grew up, not my parents, but myself, I went to fundamentalist Christian schools, which were not real fun.
And I switched it to being a Jehovah's Witness just because it's a really interesting dynamic we have in New York where you will have someone who's a gay progressive like me working with a very conservative Jehovah's Witness.
Then also I wanted to explore another dynamic which I've experienced is I've had conservative Muslim consumers, know, conservative Christian consumers that I become really, really close with and they know I'm gay, they know I'm not of their faith, but we still become really close and it's I really like love that dynamic when you get that close to people even though they're from a different background and I wanted to explore that too so that got thrown in there, you know, and then just things that would happen around me would end up in the book and it ended up being really long and I kept exploring his background and then I'm like, okay, no one is going to buy an 800 page book.
So I cut off all his parents' backstory and then most of his childhood, which a lot of it's in the book, in some of my favorite parts of the book, but it really could have been two novels. It could have been his early years and his late and then this summer, which most of the book takes place in this summer where he takes an English comp course and that's where he meets his interpreters or his one in the Cyril character who's a you know a gay progressive interpreter that works with his Jehovah's Witness interpreter.
Amy Clark (15:58)
Yeah. I think sometimes, especially with a lot of my debut writers, they are overwriting characters. You know they have to tell, you have to tell the story to yourself first, right? So you need to know who his family is. You need to know what happened to him when he was a child. And maybe you are sprinkling that for the reader because it becomes too dense for everyone to go through because then you lose that arc.
But I do think it's interesting because some of my favorite books that I've read have had some kind of strange excavation like that where there's like 400 pages like floating in the world that no one's ever seen or I had an author Sarah Damoff who wrote The Bright Years that had written her entire book in epistolary format and it informed then her thought process later which is very interesting to me. I don't think it would have been as strong of a book because she knew what the motive was because she had written it in such a different way in a reflective way. So I think that this, you know, all these hundreds of pages could be bonus content for the real fans, the real fans out there. Have you thought about that?
Blair Fell (17:03)
Yeah, it's so interesting, I just threw out...So this was my thesis in grad school. And my thesis advisor, because I handed him 600 and some pages. I had already cut it down from 800. I handed him 600 pages. And normally with your thesis advisor, you meet once a week so he can encourage you to write. And so I handed him before our first day meeting, he's like, OK, we don't need to meet, obviously. I'm just going to read this and give you feedback in several months.
OK, you got so it was a great backstory to me but it's so because now I've written three novels and I'm trying to decide on what the next one I'm gonna work on is gonna be and it's just terrifying because you know you don't know you just I'm just telling this to someone yesterday I talked about this a lot I'm like I also need to tell myself this and I do do it is this is writing you don't need to want to write, you don't need to like what you're writing. You just need to write and just do it because when I sit down to write, I'm like, Blair, this is just a placeholder. You're going to write something good some other time. That's how all my books have been written. They're all placeholders because if I, you know, I've got to write something good, I'd never write anything. So I let myself write shit and that's how I get through them.
But you end up writing a lot of stuff. I end up, I can't speak for other people. I end up writing a lot of stuff I don't use. And you just have to like, you don't know how long it's gonna take. You know, this last book was the shortest, the one that's coming out. And it was the shortest because it was inspired by a play I wrote in the 1990s, which kind of gave me, I knew what the arc of the story was.
Yeah, so that is why it was only two years to write it. I think the first one took as long as it did because I was writing much less than I write now. I didn't have as much of a discipline and setting time aside and didn't know I could do it. The second one took about five years to write and this one was two years. I have no idea what the next one's going to take. Right now I'm like, I was wrestling with three ideas and now I stupidly was like, there is this one other idea.
And like I brought it into my writing group like a prologue experimental chapter like, oh, we really love this one too. I'm like, no, just tell me what to write. I don't know which to write. But it's like you just have to suck it up at some point and just trudge through it and it's painful.
Writing a first draft is painful because you're going into the jungle without a compass and you don't know how long it's going to take, where it's going. I'm definitely a pancer and not a planner. I mean, I write an outline which laughs at me as soon as the first beat, the character's like, you thought you're going there, you're not going there. That's not who we are. Just shut the flip up and follow us. It's like that kind of writing is really the story but it's just like are you taking me on some tangent that's gonna be 400 pages that I don't use but you don't have a choice you just have to do it you know and yeah that's that's my technique
Amy Clark (20:10)
Yeah. Well, writing is one of the most, I feel like brave things to do. It's also one of the most vulnerable because there are versions of your story that are living in your mind that didn't get to make it in the book. But I want to hear about selling this, you know, for your first book, what did that process then look like after all of this time that you have spent on making this such a special story? I want to hear about that and also how you celebrated your first book sale.
Blair Fell (20:40)
Okay, so I have a really annoying book sale story and I apologize ahead of time for this story. Now remind you, since I was 29, so we're talking like 20 some years, I was writing plays, downtown plays, and then a little bit of television for a few years in Los Angeles. This is that, I'm prefacing that because otherwise it sounds a really obnoxious story.
This was my thesis, I wrote in school and then I began my second book, Disco Witches, in school as well. I was at a point with the novel, The Sign for Home, where I'm like, I cannot do any more work on this until I know if it's shit or not. Because I don't know if I can write a novel, my writing group likes it, but you know, they say they love everything, because that's how our writing group works, we love everything.
So I contacted a friend of mine who's a successful novelist, a really wonderful novelist named James Hannaham who won the Penn Faulkner Award for his book Delicious Foods and I said, and he was aware of my plays. So he'd seen my work as a playwright. And I'm like, hey, James, do you know anyone in the business that can look at this book and tell me if it's garbage or not? Because I want to know if I should just give up or whatever. I'm tired of like being in this place. I can't really work on it anymore until I know. And he's like, I can show it to my agent. And I'm like, that's a little bit beyond what I wanted, but okay. It was COVID, nothing else was going on.
2020, I was just about to graduate with my MFA. There's a publicist in my writing group, a book publicist, who helped me write the query letter. I wrote the query letter, sent the book to his agent, which is named Doug Stewart at Sterling Lord Literistic.
Not knowing Doug Stewart, by the way, is the agent for Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and the agent for David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, and the agent for the writer of The Silver Lining Playbook. I did not know this. I just thought he was an agent. James, my friend James told me. So I sent it to him. A week and a half later, he called and said, I want to talk to you. he talked to me. And he, you know, had these notes that he wanted to see if I could implement.
And I did that over the next two months. So from like May, June, July, I, you know, graduated. And he sold it in August at auction. Yeah.
Amy Clark (23:14)
Well, that's a pretty enchanting story. That is the dream, my friend. But also like you say it's kind of obnoxious, but it's not because you think about how many years you worked towards that goal. So like once it's polished and ready to go, there's no reason he would have gotten back to you if it wasn't ready, right?
Blair Fell (23:17)
Yeah. Right. And it's also, I worked, you know, eight years on it. Again, I didn't know I could write a novel, but it's also like, I had all those years of writing plays and television. So that was in there. I mean, it's like an ideal story and it's a really rare story. And I'm very, very lucky, but it isn't just, it was also because the topic is not that usual of a topic. I mean, that's probably why I had an easier time of getting an agent and selling it. It's like there's not a lot of books with main characters that are DeafBlind. So it was that really helped it along too. And I did work on it so long, but it was a surprise to me.
I have to say, we were talking about what I did to celebrate. To be honest, getting the agent, having someone say that I could actually write a novel that they were interested in that ended up being this very prestigious, amazing agent was that happiest day of my life, I will be honest. And it's just because, like you gotta understand, I really had no idea I could write a novel. Like that, again, never even conceived of that. More so than even the sale, that was the happiest day of my life when like Doug Stewart was like, I wanna talk to you. I think we will be able to sell this, that you can actually do this thing, because I love writing.
I loved writing when I was a playwright and TV writer, but I didn't like the world I was in. I don't really like working with other people when I'm being creative. I like the editing process. I like getting feedback. But when you're doing those other forms, it's a collaborative thing. And having people talk to me when I'm in the middle of doing my creative process really bugs me. And so that I got to work alone, just me and my computer, and that people liked it was just like, you mean I get to do this? You mean I can actually do this and it was the happiest day.
And I just I like I just don't even think I always like thank Doug in my book I don't think he realizes and I've told him this but I don't think he's very he's not a real effusive guy with me like sometimes I think I really annoy him but it's just like it was the happiest day because it's like this thing that you love to do more than anything you've ever loved doing it's also arduous and painful to do, but it's like so fun, like getting to follow characters where you don't know where they're going and they surprise you and you wake up in the middle of the night with ideas and then you look through the trash and like another idea pops. It's so much fun. And then I get to do this. At least I get to do this and there's at least someone who's in a position of power and authority that also thinks I could do it. And that's what I mean.
I got this tattoo. For the people that can't hear, it's like this big peony tattoo, partial sleeve on my arm in Provincetown, which is where I both got the news that the book was sold and also worked on the book a lot in Provincetown. It's one of my places I go to write.
Amy Clark (26:40)
Aww. I love Massachusetts, I used to live there so I appreciate it. We used to do little vacations there, I loved that town so what a fun, fun story. And also I just want people to really hear and embrace the fact that this is such a special accomplishment because it brings you so much joy to be a published author is the celebration itself and I think that's incredibly wonderful for your life and we all benefit from anyone who is willing to take a risk and saying maybe I could write a book.
Blair Fell (27:15)
Yeah, and also just to note, people might not know if they're not, I'm like, I was in my 50s when I started writing novels. So it's like, I'm a very late in life to this and that like, you can kind of like, I mean, a lot of times you feel like, I mean, I felt like I was over the hill ever since I was 10, but I always felt like there was something, even though I was writing and like producing my plays and getting and doing some TV work, I always felt it wasn't, I think I didn't fully find what I wanted to be doing because my plays never felt fully complete because the actualization, sometimes actors took the work way beyond what I wrote on the page and that was lovely. A lot of times they didn't, a lot of times they either met it or just weren't really well cast to it. And that always felt very disappointing to me. And so I just never felt I fully found a form or my place in creation that I felt truly comfortable for.
And then to be able to discover it in your 50s, you know, it's like, my God, you mean I can actually discover something new, this new aspect of my life and my this late in the game it's like super exciting it's like it's kind of better like sometimes like man if i discovered novel writing like way long ago i could have written so many more but it's like also, how cool is it to find something later on in life that you love and to have like the best part of your creative life later on in your life? I'm like, I'm super stoked it happened this way because it's like, it's not like, I did all that. It's like, I get to do this now. I get to do this at this time in my life where most people are winding down. And I'm like, I mean, I probably won't get through all the stories I want to write, but I get to at least go into like the end game like right you're gonna have to like you know pull my dead and cold fingers from my keyboard because i'm gonna write until I can't anymore because i just like love it
Amy Clark (29:14)
Yeah, this is incredible. Well, I want to get a little bit into your story too, Blair, because this has so many great elements for someone who doesn't know anything about the DeafBlind experience. So I want to be candid about that. I didn't know anything about this experience. The only book that I have read and also we had as a guest was Sara Nović, who wrote True Biz, which was really eye opening for a lot of our book club members, the experiences that she gifted through that book being able to see the signing and how she guided readers through it.
And this story highlights another kind of experience with tactical sign, which is something I didn't know anything about. And one of the things that really struck me is that Arlo's story really highlights the influence that an interpreter can have on access to information for an individual. What conversations are you hoping that readers may think about or consider when it comes to the ethics of interpretation after reading your book?
Blair Fell (30:13)
What's really interesting about this position of being the interpreter and also the interpreter in a novel to the reader and is both deaf people were illuminated by my book. They're like, wait, interpreters go through that, hearing people like learning about the DeafBlind world and the deaf world and what the interpreter world is. I kind of wanted to bring all these other stakeholders into the experience of these ways of being that they didn't know.
A challenge in this book was for people who haven't read the book, the book's told in first person past tense, the interpreter character, narrator speaks in the past tense in first person. And then the point of view of the DeafBlind character, Arlo, is in second person, the you voice. You are sitting at your keyboard. You are feeling the braille dots on your keyboard, you. And that came very, I gave up on the book about a third of the way through because it was just too hard. It was really just too hard. Like, why am I trying to write a novel at all, A, and B, why am I trying to write a novel with a DeafBlind protagonist?
And it ended up being an exercise I did in my graduate program for a nonfiction class that introduced me to the second person voice. And I'm like, that's it. That's the secret. That's how I can get the reader into Arlo's experience if he's using the you voice, which just definitely pulls you into this way of being. So I think that's what I want to get the readers to be aware of.
Also my DeafBlind readers, one of them that made me feel great, she's like, this feels like non-fiction, this feels like my story. And that made me feel really good that I was capturing, at least for this one DeafBlind sensitivity reader, the fact that I was presenting a DeafBlind experience that was true to her. It was a woman out west who shared that with me after reading it. so that meant a lot to me.
And also just like the eureka moments from all different kinds of readers about these other, like, again, people don't know what the interpreter goes through. It's a very delicate, ethical thing that you're doing because your job is to pass the message from one to the other. But you have to do, which I talk about, cultural mediation sometimes. Because deaf people and DeafBlind people sometimes don't understand necessarily the hearing culture of that moment, like sometimes being very direct, like it's not uncommon, you know, deaf person to say, wow, you look really fat.
You know, they're just really direct. Like I always know that I'm in good shape or bad shape. It's like what a deaf person says. Like I recently lost like 20 pounds and this deaf friend of mine, she's a deaf interpreter actually. She's like, my God, you lost a lot of weight. You have a jaw. You have a jaw finally. And I'm like, thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that.
And then, but like in certain circumstances, like if you're in a job interview, maybe not so appropriate to say, yeah, you look fat, you know, to your, you know, person that's going to give you a job or not. And so you like kind of - I'm doing a sign where it's one hand kind of passing underneath the other hand. It means kind of like feeding them a little bit of a tip. Like the tip is, hey, are you sure you want to say that? Because that could be offensive. Do you want me to say that or not? You don't just automatically make those things. Sometimes you do make linguistic decisions because you know that they don't mean, like I do this in the book. He doesn't really mean fat. He means firm and strong personality or strong presence and ways of being and she's heavy but like he doesn't mean it to be insulting so you kind of like manipulate the language to match what his message is which is a really important thing to do and and so there's all these moments in the book where Cyril is doing that for Arlo but also with the hearing people like just trying okay what is the goal here what is the message what is the goal and having to take those in and then getting the language out as best you can.
Amy Clark (34:35)
Yeah, massage the message. As a mother of an autistic child, I understand massaging the message a little bit with my kids sometimes. like, let's maybe lead with something a little bit different or, you know, maybe there's a better way we could say that. And yeah, I think that's something that you know, it's true, like how they feel about it, but also like you want them to succeed or be successful in social situations. And we see a lot of that, with the back and forth or even people having conversations and not wanting like, are you interpreting that for him? Because I don't want you to interpret that, which is something that you're like, that's my job, right?
Blair Fell (35:10)
Yeah, that happens more than I'd like to say. I had an experience, I'll just talk about it vaguely because you can't really share experiences ethically, but I was in a situation where someone was terminally ill at a hospital and the doctors were telling the person they did not have long to live. And the mother of the person there, who mostly spoke another language, was saying, no, no, no, don't tell him that.
And it was like, it was a heartbreaking moment to begin with. And you're like, someone help me here, because I need to interpret everything. Can someone please explain to the mother that everything needs to be interpreted? So I'm interpreting everything. I'm interpreting what she says. And then at a certain point, I just made the decision. I said to the social worker, can I please talk to you for a moment outside the room? I took the social worker out and said, can you please explain to everyone in the room that I need to interpret everything that's being said? Just to kind of get her to kind of take command of what's going on in the room.
It's just that happens so often. That was like, by the way, another worst interpreting experience in my life. It was so heartbreaking. Yeah, you're constantly facing these ethical issues. And then the other thing is, you know, you I'm like it's, you really care, I really care about my clients a lot. But especially when you have a long-term relationship with those clients, you have to check yourself. Because your job is still just to interpret the message. It's not to be a savior or anything like that.
But then there's these other moments where like, okay, you need, like basically my, just say you're the the teacher, my job is to interpret what you say to the student right then and there, but you realize that there's kids or students like several desks down that are sharing something that's like super important or it's like you're really there to be interpreting for the teacher and that, but you're like, that information is really valuable. So you have to filter that. Like, I really need to tell this person that even though some interpreter may not be even hearing that, but if I'm hearing that and I know that can affect this person's experience in the room, I kind of feel like a dick if I'm not like sharing that with them, you know, and giving them that information.
There's another thing that, again, I'm talking too much about interpreting, not less about the book, but it's, I was interpreting a graphic design program and the graphic design student, was actually a computer arts student, would have these labs without an interpreter. And I saw that so much of what these students were learning wasn't in the classroom, it was when they were working together in the lab.
And all this information was coming in like they're like, hey, come on, let's look at this. Look at this cool thing I found out about this, you know, this thing in the software and stuff. The deaf student wasn't getting any of that because they don't have an interpreter in the lab. They just have it during classrooms. And so, you know, they should have access to interpreters all the time, but you know, interpreters are expensive and they don't, and it's just not considered that that really needs to be happening. That they, in those moments where learning actually is really happening, it's not just between them and their computer, it's them in a computer lab with all these other students that are talking and sharing what they're learning on their own. Anyway, blah, blah, Sorry.
Amy Clark (38:40)
No, I'm glad you're telling me this because obviously you're our introduction into that world. I do want to ask you, there's a stylistic choice that you did in this novel in how Arlo's written voice reflects the structure and rhythm of ASL-influenced language, while the interpreter's narration is appearing to us in standard English. So what led you to make maybe that distinction and what was the biggest craft challenge in writing a protagonist whose primary language is ASL while telling a story in written English? I know that's a lot to throw at you, but I'm interested in the style that you chose with this.
Blair Fell (39:18)
Yeah, that was a really complicated choice. And it had different levels at different times. Basically, so in ASL syntax, you always like put the time first, like yesterday, because there's no like Mandarin Chinese, which I've studied a little bit. There's no tenses in ASL. The tense is go store, present tense.
Tomorrow, I go store. Three weeks ago, I go store. Right now, I go store. An hour ago, I go store. So you put the time first, and then there's no verb to be, and things like that in there. And it's like, OK, if I actually really wrote it in ASL, there's certain ways of notating ASL that would be absolutely indecipherable by a reader.
It's pretty much indescribable by deaf people too, unless you're like an academic deaf person. And so I needed to get a tone and I wanted to share the ASL and it is ASL. It's not again, protactile is a whole nother beast.
It's ASL that I'm having him speak in ASL ease. I call it that. It's not really ASL, but it has the flavor of ASL when he's speaking, not when Arlo's narrating. When he's narrating, it's pretty standard English in second person, but when he, there's actually more than, so it's ASL, it's standard English, first person, second person.
Also his letters are written when he writes an email he's writing in messed up English, which a lot of deaf people and DeafBlind people have something called language deprivation. It's one of the biggest challenges facing deaf and DeafBlind people in our country. And this is a fault of the parents and the medical profession because when a child is born deaf, they will often have a doctor tell the parents, don't teach them sign language because if they learn sign language, they won't learn to read lips.
And what this does is it means the child doesn't have a language for the first several years of their life, which destroys their ability to acquire language easily and hurts them pretty much for the rest of their life to a certain degree. need to have a language right out of the gate.
Children with deaf parents that start signing to them from out of the gate do so much better in every which way. Language acquisition, relationships, everything. Hearing parents, even if they learn crappy ASL, but start signing out of the gate, much better results with their children. Kids that get cochlear implants, when they learn sign language, they still thrive once they learn sign language, even though they might be approximating hearing with a cochlear implant sign language is their native language when you don't do this the person suffers something called language deprivation, which is what Arlo has. So he really struggles with English.
So the book, the stylistic choices, I wanted to express what it is for this person to be working in English, which is challenging for him with prepositions and all the, and it's very stilted, problematic English, because he has language deprivation, but he's fluent in ASL. So I wanted to show him being able to speak in ASL with his interpreters or with other deaf people. But then the narration is both for Arlo and Cyril is in Standard English, because it's all about communication and finding how we can express ourselves. And there's just all these different ways we can express ourselves. And not one way is necessarily better than the others, but it's an effort to connect.
You know, that's what the book is about. It's about using language as a way to connect, to get to truth. A big part of the book is, besides the language deprivation, his caregivers are using his DeafBlindness and his need to have these intermediaries between him and the world. They use that to their advantage, to their belief that it's gonna get him to heaven if he doesn't have access to the truth and where when he ends up getting an ethical interpreter, that's no, my job is to interpret everything to him that starts opening the world to him. And he's like, at a certain point, the book is like, how can I find my happiness if you're not telling me the truth?
Now I might say, I'm gonna get a little political here. It's so interesting because my second book, Disco Witches, really resonates for this kind of dark moment we're living in our country. I wrote this first book mostly during the first Trump administration. I'm not going to hedge bets. I am not a Trump supporter at all. I think it's the most devastating thing that's happened to our country. And that was a big thing in my thought process, because so many lies were being told. How can we form decisions if we're not being given accurate information? And it was just the tip of the iceberg at that point with the Internet when lies are being told, when there's no filter to what's true and what's false. And that was a big thing in my mind.
And that's what was happening with Arlo is he had caregivers that were not filtering him or were not giving him the truth, the unvarnished truth for him to be able to make his own decisions on his own happiness so how do you do that and then he got someone in his life that's like okay it's not a savior it's just like here's the truth now you make the decision on your own what you want to do with the truth.
So anyway, that's why I did those linguistic stylistic choices was just to have all these different ways of how information gets passed and to show these varying ways of communication. Not one is worse or better than the other. All of them are even English in the chapter which you pointed out in the beginning of this podcast where Cyril, the interpreter is struggling to express the word the sublime, where he's questioning how do I get this through in this poem to this DeafBlind guy who hasn't seen mountains in many many years and in all the ways the interpreter is thinking of the sublime, how does he express that? But even in English, it's really hard to get to the truth, the essence of something. Even when it's our native language, and how do you do that? We're all striving in all these forms of language to be able to express what's in the world and what's in our hearts. It's all, all of us are struggling with that, with whatever language we're speaking. So I think that's what I was trying to get at.
Amy Clark (46:08)
Yeah, I get it. to not say that some of this doesn't intertwine with our politics is a false thing. And I am raising children in the disabled community. I am disabled. And the things that started to happen in our own real lived experiences have been very hard to navigate, to be an advocate for my children. Things that were in place before are no longer existing for my kids. And it's incredibly frustrating. It could honestly make me cry when I think about it and it affects people. It affects our daily life. It's expensive. It's taxing. It's exhausting and we are already exhausted. So all of that layered upon it.
And I think that one of the things that I guess I appreciated most about the story, you know, even that it's existing at this time versus where we're in this timeline right now is that Arlo has to get technology to support his communication in the story. And I feel like you embed so many details on how those devices, the things that he needs in order to be a successful student, to be a successful person are often not available, hard to get access to things that you actually need someone who is an advocate in your life to put into place. I'd love for readers to hear a little bit about the technology and how you see it's evolved. I'm also wondering, I know this is kind of futuristic, but has AI changed things for people in the DeafBlind community at all or is this just like for us changing our worlds?
Blair Fell (47:46)
I mean the AI stuff is happening so fast. I'm just like myself recently like, wow, it can like help me with nutrition. It can like all of this. It's also a nightmare, you know, cause so many, like the other week I realized.
I don't use it for my writing. I mean, sometimes I use it for research, but I don't write with AI at all. I'm also by my publishers forbidden to put anything about my books into AI, which I wouldn't. But I'm like, oh, I have a financial question. I have a publicist question. I have another marketing question. And I'm like, I just killed three careers in like these questions I asked AI. I don't know how the DeafBlind are using AI right now.
I do know it is helping, again, when you're struggling with language and doing like a cover letter, a lot of everybody, not just deaf people and DeafBlind people, but everyone's using it to do these really formulaic things that make their English look better. So using it to kind of write more standard English, that's happening.
One interesting story about, I mentioned this in the book about this one foundation that helps provide technology for DeafBlind people in the book. I could cry about this. is, my readers are amazing. I love my readers. And this one reader wrote me that she loved the book and she changed her will to donate to that organization. Yeah.
Amy Clark (49:18)
Oh my gosh. Okay, I'm gonna cry with you.
Blair Fell (49:19)
Yeah, I could cry about that. That like, that made me like so happy. It's just, I can't actually remember the name of the organization, but they provide equipment for people that are DeafBlind. Because people with DeafBlind, in order for them to interface, there's all, again, DeafBlindness is not a monolith. Deafness is not a monolith. People that, I always say this, like, people that are hearing and sighted are very individual. People that are deaf are even more individual because did their parents sign? Did they not sign? When did they learn sign language? What kind of schooling did they have? They're more kind of individual.
DeafBlind people, a whole other level of individual. How much sight do they have? How much hearing do they have? Do they use tactile sign language? Do they use pro-tactile sign language? All these things make them very individualistic. But there's all this technology. And that's the other thing about being able to have access to protactile, which I mentioned several times that I don't talk a lot about the book, but I do talk about it. It's the language of the DeafBlind. It's a language that's come out of the DeafBlind people themselves. It's a new language. Maybe about 15 years ago, it started. But it's only kind of now coming into the DeafBlind community at large. It started with these people, DeafBlind people in Seattle and Minnesota and tactile sign language, which is what's spoken in the book is just American sign language in someone's hand. Protactile is a completely different thing. It's all this using several parts of the body. Like you might have it done on your chest. You could have it done on your leg. It just kind of depends on the person's preference.
But there's all this vocabulary that specifically, like for example, I'll try to describe this. This is the sign for mother, it's the five hand on your chin. Sign for father, the five hand on the head. Well, if you're DeafBlind, you may not know where that is on the body. you could like, you know, let them feel what part of the head it's on, but that's harder. So there's DeafBlind, there's protactile signs for mother and father. You know, mother is this, father is this. And again, podcast people, they're just listening. It's like the hand kind of sucking a breast would you say on someone's body for mother and for the father, and it's not just on the breast, it could be done on the leg, for the father, it's like a closed, kind of the points of the fingers that just come, hit the body and then open up into a flat hand.
This is the sign for bathroom, which is the T sign, waved in the air. For a DeafBlind person, you kind of take the fingers and draw the handle of the toilet and then flush it up and down on their body. Again, this could be done on the leg, it could be done on the back, it could be done on the arm, it could be done on the chest. For DeafBlind people, like sometimes their arms get tired if it's up here, so they do, I can't show this because you're not looking at my lap, but all the language is happening on their thigh, like down here, because they don't want to raise their arms all day because it's very tiring. So that's a whole other language.
The technology they use to look at the internet is they'll have, you know, something connected to the internet or their phone, which is connected to a braille device that instantly creates braille on a little braille keyboard. And so that they can read the news. There's all these rules for the internet. It's called the wag rules, which are to make the internet accessible, you know, to make sure that people with epilepsy won't be, you know, having seizures by looking at the screen, that people with color blindness will have, you know, issues with that. Not every website unfortunately follows it, it helps websites be more navigable for people with disabilities. And there's all this technology that can help bring the DeafBlind person more into the world that are available.
And again, Cyril because he has this other access, kind of introduces Arlo to in the world and Arlo realizes the equipment he's using is old and he could get this new equipment and that's really exciting because how thrilling it is to have, you know, these things. The internet changed things. As much as I hate what the internet's done to our world, for deaf people and DeafBlind people, it has been a major game changer.
Now imagine you're 20 years old, I'm gonna be very graphic right now, and you're sexual and you realize you might have an STD. You have to go through an interpreter or your mother to make a phone call for you to the doctor to find out what's up with you. Now you have all these ways, you can make a call yourself. Deaf people and some DeafBlind people use something called VRS, which is a government supported thing. So if you're deaf and you need to call the doctor to say, Hey, I wanna get birth control pills, you can make the call yourself to an interpreter paid for by some company that the government subsidizing anytime you want. You can have access to an interpreter for these calls and that couldn't happen before the internet. So the internet's really changed people that way. AI, other than clarifying their English and stuff like that, or I think it's mostly changed the way everyone uses it, I don't know anything specifically for the DeafBlind related to AI yet.
Amy Clark (54:54)
Okay, that's interesting. Wow. Well, Blair? We are going to probably close out here on the main show because I want to get a few minutes with you to talk through your book's ending. And patrons if you are a patron of the show for $5 a month, you get access to all the spoiler chats and it also keeps us commercial free and it gives a space to writers like Blair to tell their stories so we can connect with their books.
But at the end of every episode, we just always ask our authors what they're feeling proud of, whether it's with this project or with life in general. And it gives me a chance to say, thank you. This book was so special. I ended up starting a backlist feature on Patreon specifically because of this book, because I wanted to share this experience. What you did was incredible. I'm so impressed that you narrated this audio book as well, which is a whole other wheelhouse, I'm sure as a writer. But what you did for me is help me understand another aspect to the disability community. I hope more readers will pick this up and it gives us a chance to connect with all of your books and your work.
Congrats on the Lammy. It's amazing. So I would love to hear what you're feeling proud of right now.
Blair Fell (56:08)
I mean, I am feeling proud of my first two books. Again, just like not knowing that you could be a novelist at all and having the first books. The second one is a USA Today bestseller, which is cool, the Lammy Award one. The first one was a finalist, a long list for the Center for Fiction's first book prize, which was cool. And both won the Doris Lippmann Prize at City College. I think I'm the only writer to win it twice.
I'm really proud of these books. I'll be honest, when I first finished them, I thought, I don't know if anyone will like them at all, because it ends up looking like just a bunch of words by the time you're finished it. But then when readers start feeling like it helps them have a new understanding about the world or gets them through like a hard time in their life. I feel really proud of them. I'm super excited that they become something separate from me and it's something that I get to look at and say, this is so cool. Like I'm enjoying this now too.
It doesn't feel that way when I'm writing it. I'm like, oh my God, is anyone even gonna understand this? You know, I have like terrible grammar. And by the way, just a tip for anyone who's a writer, you don't need to be good with grammar. They fix it for you. Yes, hot tip.
Amy Clark (57:22)
Ooh, that is a hot tip.
Well, Blair, this has been such a treat. I'm so excited that we got to talk through this story with you and friends. I will meet you on the other side of the paywall.
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