July is National Disability Pride Month in the United States and marks the 36th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To celebrate, Civitella highlights the work of Civitellians living with and making work about disability.
Epistle poems written in collaboration back and forth between Molly McCully Brown (CRF Lexi Rudnitsky/Persea 2017) and Susannah Nevison (CRF Lexi Rudnitsky/Persea 2015), In the Field Between Us (Persea Books) considers disability and the possibility of belonging in the aftermath of lifelong medical intervention. Ilya Kaminsky calls it “a beautiful, urgent book”.
In Mother Tongue (Random House), Sara Nović (CRF 2017) weaves her personal story into a remarkable portrait of America through reflections on some of its most complex histories: the rise of the Christian right, the thorny world of international adoption, and above all, the deaf and disabled communities’ stubborn survival in the face of persistent oppression. “This is not just a tremendous entry into the world of disability literature,” writes Porochista Khakpour (CRF 2024), “it is a poignant tale of parenthood that should be mandatory reading for everyone. Nović gets to the heart of humanness without making loss, grief, or difference a disadvantage. . . . A miracle of a book.”
In his own words, Raymond Antrobus (CRF 2025) writes of his memoir The Quiet Ear (Hogarth), “I live with the aid of deafness. Like poetry, it has given me an art, a history, a culture and a tradition to live through. This book charts that art in the hopes of offering a map, a mirror, a small part of a larger story.” Safiya Sinclair (CRF 2023) calls it “[a] litany to beauty beyond what is spoken. This book is an essential education.” Incoming Director’s Guest Clint Smith says it “[b]eautifully complicates and expands our understanding of what deafness is . . . a book that changed how I will move through the world.”
In CRIP TIME (2018) Carolyn Lazard (CRF 2026) uses the durational medium of video to transform the seemingly mundane task of replenishing an assortment of brightly colored pill boxes into a new way of measuring time—one that reflects the experience of living with chronic illness. The film is part of the exhibition Deep Play, on view now through August 7th at Greene Naftali in New York City, which brings together a group of artists who use formal means to upend art’s means of production—implicating the checkered conditions of life under capitalism in its wake.
In Institutional Critiques, on view now through July 2028, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Carolyn’s installation A Conspiracy (2017) repurposes humming white noise machines to provide viewers with a location—notably, in an institutional space—to gather in “conspiratorial speech and gossip”.
Gabriela Lena Frank (CRF 2007) won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Picaflor: A future myth. It will be performed next by Oregon Symphony in Portland, Oregon this coming October, and then released on a record label. Gabriela also has a disc of several of her works coming out on the Hyperion label with the Takács Quartet next year. Beginning on October 18th, PBS will be broadcasting, on television and online, the Met Opera video performance of Gabriela’s recent opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego. The composer’s recent Conquest Requiem (Naxos) with Nashville Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero conducting can be found on music streaming platforms.