Works

Returns: Poems Selected and New

With his poems, essays, memoirs, journalism, and advocacy, Kenny Fries has been in the vanguard of disability literature for over forty years. From considerations of Darwin and Social Darwinism to the flinty and dismissive corridors of American medicine, Fries shows us how disability, embodiment, queerness, curiosity, and contrarianism can push us toward hope. With Returns: Poems Selected and New, the power of his lyricism reminds us why poetry truly matters. This is an important book by a poet at the height of his craft. Read More >

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In the Province of the Gods

Kenny Fries embarks on a journey of profound self-discovery as a disabled foreigner in Japan, a society historically hostile to difference. As he visits gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he also discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and A-bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality, are shaken, and he must find a way to reenter life on new terms. Read More >

NOW IN PAPERBACK!

In 2020, Kenny received a 3-year multi-project grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to support collaborative projects with artists and institutions around the world, using his privilege as a pioneer in disability arts to foster an enduring connection between generations of disabled artists.

PROJECTS TO DATE:

• In The Gardens Of Japan song cycle

• In The Gardens of Japan film

• Disability Poetics

• A Picture of Health: Jo Spence, a Politics of Disability and Illness

• Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer exhibit opened on September 1, 2022, at Schwules Museum Berlin

• Disability Futures in the Arts

• Life (Un)Worthy of Life: A Queer Dis/Crip Talk Show, Season 3, Episode 1: Chicago and On the Zoom Ramp of the Universe

Kenny’s audiotext, “Disability Can Save Your Life,” is written in a hybrid form, between poem and essay, a collage also including a brief passage from In the Province of the Gods, as well as references to other related history, including the killing of the disabled in the Nazi Aktion T4 program. Though the piece was written in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and, on the surface, it is about the uncertainty and danger of these times, it is also about misunderstandings of what constitutes a disabled life, misunderstandings that are a pandemic of its own. “Disability Can Save Your Life” is dedicated to Stacey Park, DJSC disability activist, who died of non-COVID-related causes on May 19, her 33rd birthday.