Thirty years ago, I published Planet of the Blind, a memoir that got scads of attention. It was named a New York Times Notable Book and received a glowing review from Michiko Kakutani, who was famously tough-minded. I was thirty-nine and Planet was my first book. Six months later, I followed it up with Only Bread, Only Light, a collection of poems from Copper Canyon Press. Nineteen years after getting my MFA at Iowa, I was finally in print. The years between grad school and my publishing breakthrough were marked by disability struggles—being blind meant that finding a job was terribly difficult. One advisor from the New York State Commission for the Blind told me about a factory that made plastic lemons and said they’d hire me. Being a writer with a disability wasn’t easy.