Kenny Fries writes out of the pure hot emergency of a mortal being trying to keep himself alive. So much is at stake here—health, affection, culture, trauma, language—but its greatest surprise is what thrives in the midst of suffering.
This fall, Some Serious Business welcomes author Kenny Fries for a month-long residency in Podere Malabiccia, a 40-acre working olive-oil farm just outside the tiny hamlet of Petroio, Tuscany, hosted by our partner, artist Carey Maxon. Back in 2017—when his critically acclaimed book In the Province of the Gods was published—we asked Kenny to answer a few of our #FiftyQuestions.
Artist Statement
For more than two decades, I have used the prism of my life as a writer who lives with a congenital physical disability to forge a new understanding of a wide range of values and ideas, from systems of interdependence to intersectionality to Darwinian evolution to connections between disability and the Holocaust.
I will use the residency to research and write “Annunciations,” a new long essay which is part of my next book, Frida Kahlo’s Leg: Essays on Disability, Role Models, and Representation. In the essay, I explore an inchoate relationship between my fascination with Annunciation images and my personal disability history. “Annunciations” stems from an idea that haunts me. Why do paintings and images of the biblical story of the Annunciation—when the archangel Gabriel announces to Mary she will conceive a son, Jesus, the son of God—resonate? I am not Christian, nor am I religious. Why do I search out Annunciation images wherever I go? Why has this event, depicted by countless known and unknown artists, captured my attention for decades?
About Kenny Fries
Kenny Fries is the author of In the Province of the Gods (Creative Capital Literature Award), The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory (Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights), and Body, Remember: A Memoir. He edited Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera to write the libretto for The Memory Stone. His books of poems include In the Gardens of Japan, Desert Walking, and Anesthesia. His work has appeared in many places including The New York Times, Granta, The Believer, and Literary Hub. Twice a Fulbright Scholar (Japan and Germany), he was a Creative Arts Fellow of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts; received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts and Literary Arts Fellowship; as well as grants from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College.
Kenny Fries in the New York Times
In the Province of the Gods, 2017