Streaming and Podcasting

A WSUI Public Radio report says my interview with Ben Kieffer this Friday, October 3rd, in celebration of the publication of the publication of Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio will be streamed over the Internet and available via podcast.

Presley reads from new University of Iowa Press memoir Oct. 3

(Media-Newswire.com) - Gary Presley will read from his memoir, "7 Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio," just out from the University of Iowa Press, at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, in the Prairie Lights bookstore at 15 S. Dubuque St. in downtown Iowa City. Listen live via the University of Iowa Writing University Web site: http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu.

The event will be recorded for broadcast on Iowa Public Radio's "Live from Prairie Lights" series. Hour-long "Live from Prairie Lights" productions, hosted by WSUI's Julie Englander, air at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays on WSUI-AM 910 in Iowa City and WOI-AM 640 in Ames.

Allen Rucker, author of "The Best Seat in the House: How I Woke Up One Day and Was Paralyzed for Life," comments, "Alternating between sardonic and blunt, Gary Presley maps out an almost-50-year trek from infantile paralysis to post-polio syndrome to bonding with his power chair, Little Red; from helpless, passive cripple to defiant Gimp.

Seven Wheelchairs Reviewed at The Internet Review of Books

From a reviewer, Gilion Dumas, who I think found the core of the story ...

Presley’s book is as ambiguous, frustrating, and inconsistent as real life, with all of life’s rough edges and raw patches. It is not a guide to understanding “the disabled” as a group; it is a glimpse of the world through one man’s eyes. It is intensely personal story, and all the more powerful for it.

• Read the entire review here.

A Kirkus Review

"Presley's writing is deeply emotional, sometimes excessive and a bit too self-flagellating," so say the good folks at Kirkus about my memoir, SEVEN WHEELCHAIRS: A Life beyond Polio, but they concluded with the thought that it is "One of the more honest and informative disease memoirs."

And that will tie knots in the knickers of my friends in the disability activism movement who work hard to remind every one that "a disease might cause a disability, but a disability is not a disease."

On the other hand, Holly Carver, the editor-in-chief at the University of Iowa Press, wrote me a note saying "I am really happy about this review, congrats, it’s extremely encouraging, way to go!"