Do not be afraid of your face. Move into a beam of light in the bar. Smile openly. Watch his hands move quicker than strobe lights as he surveys the crowd with his friends. Do not think of how hard it might be to have a casual conversation. When he comes across the floor, do…

In Ironhood, the acclaimed poet Raymond Luczak recalls the neighbors and shopkeepers he once knew while growing up in Ironwood, Michigan during the 1970s and 1980s. They included a scruffy man who smoked cheap cigars while tending to his fragrant backyard garden, a cat-eyed woman who stood watch over a sea of typewriters, a bald…

What if you felt you didn’t belong where you lived? In Far from Atlantis, Raymond Luczak tells stories of two vastly different worlds: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which often looks like an island on the map, and the fabled island of Atlantis.  While recounting his troubled childhood as the only deaf person in a large…

For many of those who’ve lived there, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan can seem like a magical place because nature there feels so potent and, at times, full of mystery. After having grown up there, Raymond Luczak can certainly attest to its mythical powers. In Chlorophyll, he reimagines Lake Superior and its environs as well as…

So many stories … queerly retold. There’s a reason why so many people still debate the Bible, research the history of Greek myths, and resurrect the pagan beliefs co-opted by organized religion. These stories are filled with characters who’ve never gone away even in our modern times. Lunafly retells many of these stories, often through…

What if you had a twin? When Raymond Luczak was growing up deaf in a hearing Catholic family of nine children, his mother shared conflicting stories about having had a miscarriage after—or possibly around—the time he was conceived. As an elegy to his lost twin, this book asks: If he had a twin, just how…

With Bokeh Focus, Raymond Luczak trains his photographer’s eye as a gay man upon his subjects and examines the impact of imagery on one’s own identity.