Hennebach Series – Invisible Disabilities, Missing Song: a discussion of art, living, and loss

John Cotter started losing his hearing at age 30. Five years later, in the grip of vertigo and with sound too distorted to understand, he could no longer work at the job he loved or hike or hear music. He’d lost the life he’d planned, and was forced to start over, as a new person with an invisible disability and new limitations and a new understanding of the world. What followed was a struggle to adapt, and a search for meaning—a new kind of meaning, and new kind of connection to other people, to nature and to art. 

BIO: John Cotter is the author of the memoir, Losing Music, and the novel, Under the Small Lights, and has had essays and fiction published in the The New York Times, Guernica, Epoch, Joyland, and other spots. Cotter is a former instructor at the School of Mines and at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, and now lives in New England with his wife, the poet and essayist, Elisa Gabbert.