Musician, Broadway composer, and disability advocate Gaelynn Lea is coming to the DCC with special guest Haben Girma to celebrate the release of her new memoir! It’s a love letter to every kind of body, music, and making it work. Books will be for sale by Book Passage at the event.
About Gaelynn Lea:
Gaelynn Lea got her big break when she won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016. Since then, she has been captivating audiences around the world with her haunting original songs and traditional fiddle tunes, and has collaborated with Michael Stipe, The Decemberists, and even Pigface. One of Gaelynn Lea’s biggest passions is promoting Disability Culture. She helped to co-found RAMPD [Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities] with NYC based recording artist Lachi in early 2022. In 2024, Gaelynn was awarded a prestigious Disability Futures Fellowship from the Ford and Mellon Foundations, which spotlights the work of disabled creatives across disciplines. Gaelynn Lea just finished writing her first book, which is about her touring adventures and disability advocacy. Her forthcoming memoir, “It Wasn’t Meant To Be Perfect,” is a love-letter to every body – a warm, funny and deeply-felt exploration of disability, music, and the messy creativity of an artist’s life.
About Haben Girma:
The first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, Haben Girma is a human rights lawyer, author, and keynote speaker. President Obama named her a White House Champion of Change. She received the Helen Keller Achievement Award and a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. In 2023, she became one of the first leaders appointed to serve as a Commissioner on the new World Health Organization Commission on Social Connection. Haben believes disability is an opportunity for innovation, and she travels the world teaching organizations the importance of choosing inclusion. Harnessing the power of the written word to spark advocacy, she published the bestseller Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. Warm, funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, the book is a testament to her determination to resist isolation and find the keys to connection.