Henry Kisor – Famous Deaf Author

Henry Kisor is the author of What’s that Pig Outdoors? and other novels based on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan locales. Deaf all his life, blogger, professional editor and writer for Chicago newspaper, humorist.

“The average deaf person has the peripheral vision of a fish-eye lens, almost 180 degrees, and spots the tiniest movement within this range long before the average hearing person can do so. In practical terms this superior visual acuity has led some automobile insurance companies in recent years to give sizable rate discounts to deaf drivers.” – Henry Kisor, What’s That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness

Henry Kisor was born in 1940 and became deaf at the age of three after a bout with meningitis. He was educated at Trinity College for his B.A. and at Northwestern University for his M.S.J.

Henry Kisor was the book editor for the Chicago Sun-Times and is now retired. He is also the author of three mystery novels (Season’s Revenge, A Venture into Murder, and Cache of Corpses) and three nonfiction books (What’s That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness, Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America, and Flight of the Gin Fizz: Midlife at 4,500 Feet), is the co-author of one children’s book, and writes two blogs (The Reluctant Blogger and The Whodunit Photographer).

Kisor’s reviews and articles have appeared in publications such as the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and MSNBC.com. Kisor was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1981. The Friends of Literature awarded him the first James Friend Memorial Critic Award in 1988 and the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Nonfiction in 1991. Kisor was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2001.

You can read more about Henry Kisor on his website: http://www.henrykisor.com/