Kenny Fries

His books of poems include In the Gardens of Japan (2017), Desert Walking (2006) and Anesthesia (2000). He received a 2009 Creative Capital grant in Innovative Literature, the 2007 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the Gregory Kolovakos Award, a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the National Endowment, and has twice been a Fulbright Scholar (in Japan and Germany). In 2017, he created the Fries Test for disability in fiction and film, akin to the Bechdel Test for women.

Fries was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated with an MFA from Columbia University's School for the Arts. Fries graduated in 1977 from John Dewey high school and went on to pursue a degree in English and American Literature, at Brandeis University. He received a master's degree in Playwriting at Columbia University.

Kenny Fries officially started writing in 1988, after he had begun attending Millay Colony for the Arts. The majority of Fries' books and poems were written due to his experiences as a disabled, gay, Jewish man. Some of the writings that Fries has written include: Body, Remember: A Memoir (2003), Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out, The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory (2007), Anesthesia: Poems by Kenny Fries (1996), Desert Walking: Poems (2000), The Healing Notebooks (1990) and Night After Night: Poems (1984). Some of the scholarly writings written by Fries include: "Songs of Whitman" (2003), "Comedy is Not a Crutch" (2001), and "Where Ecstasy Might Reside" (1995).

Inspired by Alison Bechdel's test to determine if a creative work has a fair representation of women, Fries created the "Fries Test" for disability. Fries wrote that to pass the Fries Test, a creative work needs: • to have more than one disabled character; • the disabled characters need to have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a nondisabled character; • the characters' disability should not be eradicated either by curing or killing.

• The Healing Notebooks (1990) • Anesthesia: Poems (1996) • Body, Remember: A Memoir (1997) • Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out (1997) • Desert Walking: Poems (2000) • The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory (2007) • The Memory Stone (2013) • In the Gardens of Japan (2017) • In the Province of the Gods (2017)