Touch the Future

”[A] lively, inviting collection.… [John Lee Clark is] able to draw sharp distinctions between different kinds of living, speaking fluently to those of us who experience the full use of our eyes and ears without thinking about it.” – Anna Heyward - The New York Times Book Review“John Lee Clark writes against the grain with intellectual ferocity and dry wit; with linguistic playfulness and unsparing precision; and above all, with an expansive, curious, tireless compassion. Society may ignore and isolate DeafBlind people, but as Clark shows us again and again, it is the sighted and hearing world that is marginalized by its failure to understand DeafBlind life, and never the other way around.” – Andrew Leland, author of The Country of the Blind“Touch the Future opens doors to the multiple worlds of disability…This is a book for anyone who is interested in the life of the imagination and the mind.” – Stephen Suusisto, author of Eavesdropping“John Lee Clark’s fervent manifesto for the Protactile language and movement will blow your mind, enliven your body, and connect you to other people in unexpected ways. Touch the Future is a book that enlarges the human world.” – Edward Hirsch, author of Stranger by Night

John Lee Clark is an award-winning writer and Protactile educator. He has received the Krause Essay Prize and a National Magazine Award for his prose. His poetry collection, How to Communicate, received the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award. A 2021–2023 Bush Fellow, he lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with his partner, the ASL Deaf artist Adrean Clark, their three kids, and two cats.