Works by Adam Pottle
BUTTERFLY ON THE WIND (2024)
A magical picture book about a Deaf girl who creates a butterfly with Sign Language and sends it on a journey around the world.
On the day of the talent show, Aurora's hands tremble. No matter how hard she tries to sign, her fingers stumble over one another and the words just won't come. But as she’s about to give up, she spots a butterfly.
Using her hands to sign the ASL word for "butterfly," Aurora sends a magical butterfly of her own into the world, inspiring Deaf people across the globe to add their own. The butterflies grow in numbers and strength as they circle back to Aurora, bolstering her with the love and support of her worldwide Deaf community.
"Deaf picture book creators author Adam Pottle and artist Ziyue Chen combine powerful text and sweeping art into a moving story of resilience and self-belief."
Apparitions (2023)
VIOLENCE WAS HIS FIRST LANGUAGE.
A nameless Deaf teen escapes his father's basement after years of imprisonment. Bloody, alone, and without language, he stumbles through the Saskatchewan prairies and lands in a psychiatric facility, where he meets Felix, another Deaf teen. Felix—cunning and ambitious—teaches the nameless narrator Sign Language and begins to mould the abused teen's mind. But mould into what?
Reviews
“Horrifying and also deeply human. A heartbreaking look at the way society fails people and the monstrousness that grows in the dark places that we turn away from and refuse to see. A highly addictive read.”
—A. C. Wise, author of The Ghost Sequences
“A young deaf man escapes years of cruelty and abuse—deprived of love, language, even a name—into the arms of a troubled savior who gives him all three at a terrible cost. Apparitions is a gripping, pulse-pounding thriller about desire and terror, faith and revenge, suffused with ever-escalating dread as it hurtles towards its devastating conclusion. Adam Pottle evokes Cormac McCarthy and Jack Ketchum with his taut muscular prose and his wrenching insights into the lonely violent lives of those who are forced into society’s margins. An intensely unsettling read that wound its way into my nightmares.”
—David Demchuk, author of The Bone Mother and RED X
Press
It’s a brilliant work that should not be overlooked.
- Quill & Quire
'A beautiful sledgehammer': Author Adam Pottle pens new perspectives on Canadian horror
- Star Phoenix
Q&A: Deaf Saskatoon writer finds art in his disability
- CBC News
THE BLACK DRUM (2019)
How do Deaf people experience music? And how can we use that music to tell a story?
The Black Drum is the world’s first all-Deaf musical, using Sign Language and Signed Music all the way through. This play, which was produced in Toronto in June 2019 by the Deaf Culture Centre and Soulpepper Theatre, follows Joan, a woman grieving her wife, Karen. Joan’s grief pulls her into a bizarre world where her tattoos come alive and an evil presence called the Minister rules over the land. To defeat the Minister and free herself from grief, Joan must learn to express her own music.
Reviews
Voice: On Writing with Deafness (2019)
In Voice, Adam Pottle explores the crucial role being deaf has played in the growth of his imagination, and in doing so presents a unique perspective on a writer’s development. Born deaf in both ears, Pottle recounts what it was like growing up in a world of muted sound, and how his deafness has influenced virtually everything about his writing, from his use of language to character and plot choices. Salty, bold, and relentlessly honest, Voice makes us think about writing in entirely new ways and expands our understanding of deafness and the gifts that it can offer.
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THE BUS (2016)
Detailing a six-hour window on April 21, 1941, The Bus features eight different narrators: six mental patients, the doctor who will kill them, and the man who will burn their corpses. Crammed into a bus with 35 others and unable to see out the painted windows, the patients are transferred from the Scheuern institution to the Nazi euthanasia clinic in Hadamar, Germany.
ULTRASOUND (2016)
Ultrasound tells the story of a couple, Miranda and Alphonse, and what they go through when they attempt to conceive a child. Alphonse, a Deaf man, wants the child to be deaf; Miranda, who has some hearing, doesn’t care if it’s hearing or deaf. A devastating exploration of the consequences of eugenics, Ultrasound asks the question, “In what circumstances would someone not want a child because it was normal?”
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MANTIS DREAMS: THE JOURNAL OF DR. DEXTER RIPLEY (2013)
A satire that mocks both academia and ableism, Mantis Dreams is told through the sardonic voice of Dr. Dexter Ripley, an English professor working in Saskatchewan. Dexter, a wheelchair user with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, works to expose disability discrimination in medicine, government, education, and family; the problem is he fails to recognize his own toxicity. With his scathing vitriol, Dexter reveals the ugly, exploitative side of privilege and the discomforting effects of internalized ableism.
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BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (2011)
In this jarring collection, Adam Pottle cracks open the world of disability, illuminating it with an idiom that is both unsettling and exhilarating. His subjects are gritty and multifarious: amputee sex swingers; drug-related shootings; institutionalized adolescents coerced into sterilization. Difficult as their circumstances may seem, Pottle's denizens learn to navigate the world with creative resolve, even defiance, searching for an identity that includes their disabilities rather than spites them. His poems scrape our nerves; they test and undermine poetic forms, challenging our own sensibilities in the process.
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