10 Ryan Knighton
He likes to mess with people. Often they don’t believe he is blind.
He sometimes wears regular glasses and looks at people when they speak to
him. At readings he looks at his book and appears to be actually reading
from it. But Ryan Knighton is blind. He has been slowly going blind for
the last 20 years—since he was 18. Knighton, who teaches at Capilano
University, wrote Cockeyed, his internationally acclaimed memoir
about the experience. It is far more comedy than tragedy and his
screenplay based on the book is currently optioned for film with Jodie
Foster set to direct. Ryan became a dad a few years ago and that opened up
a whole new world to navigate in the dark. He did what he does best and
wrote C’mon Papa: Dispatches From a Dad in the Dark (Knopf
Canada). Again, there is a whole lot of funny mixed in with the real
challenges of looking after a child he cannot see.
Photo: Brad Cran
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