Laureate Writers Series Features Book Launch of Naomi Cohn’s Memoir
Tuesday | December 3 | 7 pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse | 162 W 2nd St.
Book Launch of Naomi Cohn’s Memoir at Blue Heron
On Tuesday, December 3rd the Laureate Writers Series will feature a Book Launch of poet, memoirist, and teacher Naomi Cohn’s new memoir The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on Altered Sight. The event will take place at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, 162 W 2nd St., Winona, at 7 pm followed by a book signing and an open mic. The event is free and open to the public.
If you are visually impaired you will find her work particularly compelling and unlike any other you will encounter.
The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on Altered Sight examines vision loss and relearning to read and write as an adult. Cohn is a writer and teaching artist. Her past includes a childhood among Chicago academics; involvement in a guerrilla feminist art collective; and work as an encyclopedia copy editor, community organizer, grant writer, fundraising consultant, and therapist. A 2023 McKnight Artist Fellow in Writing, her previous publications include a chapbook, Between Nectar & Eternity. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in: AWP Chronicle, Baltimore Review, Fourth River, Hippocampus, Ninth Letter, Terrain, and Poetry. Cohn has also appeared on NPR and been honored by a Best of the Net Finalist and two Pushcart nominations. Raised in Chicago, she now lives on unceded Dakota territory in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
“Naomi Cohn’s engrossing debut memoir The Braille Encyclopedia is a wonderful wide-ranging rendering of a life in love with words and the world words make. Cohn brilliantly twines personal and familial history with the history of Louis Braille and his life on the way to creating a tactile language for people living with blindness. At turns poignant and humorous as it chronicles Cohn’s progressive loss of sight, I finished this abecedarian collection of essays and prose poems gratefully feeling I’d gotten an ‘all-around education.’”
Sean Hill, author of Dangerous Goods
This event is co-sponsored by the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, Shipwreckt Books, Chapter Two Books, and Friends of the Winona Public Library.
Photo: Author Naomi Cohn.
Shipwreckt Books Publishing Company and Laureates Writers Series organizers Ken McCullough and Emilio DeGrazia are members of the River Arts Alliance. To learn more about the benefits of membership, please visit: riverartsalliance.org/membership/.