About Elsa
Elsa Sjunneson is an award-winning Deafblind author, editor, historian, media critic, and speaker living in Seattle. Her work includes the forthcoming Dear Blind Lady: Disability Advice You Didn’t Know You Needed (Sasquatch Books, October 6, 2026), the Washington State Book Award-winning memoir Being Seen, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Sword of the White Horse. She has won three Hugo Awards, an Aurora Award, and a British Fantasy Award for editorial work, and her nonfiction has appeared in venues including CNN, Tor.com, and The Boston Globe.
A white woman with short hair and an occluded cataract on her right eye wearing purple hearing aids and a pearl necklace, looking with raised eyebrows at camera between trees.
Photo credit: Lis Mitchell, 2021.
A white woman with short hair and an occluded cataract on her right eye holding a cane and wearing purple hearing aids, leather vest, pearl necklace, and striped button-down top, looking with raised eyebrows at camera.
Photo credit: Lis Mitchell, 2021.
A white woman in profile with short hair wearing purple hearing aids, leather vest, pearl necklace, and striped button-down top, looking into distance with Seattle skyline behind her. The light of the sunset gleams in her glasses.
Photo credit: Lis Mitchell, 2021.
About Dear Blind Lady
Cover image of Dear Blind Lady: Disability Advice You Didn’t Know You Needed by Elsa Sjunneson. The cover has a teal background with bold black title text, sunglasses, a white cane with a red tip, and a sticky note reading “but not like Helen Keller.”
Dear Blind Lady: Disability Advice You Didn’t Know You Needed publishes October 6, 2026 from Sasquatch Books. ISBN: 9781632176363.
Dear Prudence meets AITA, but for disability: a sharp, funny, useful guide for the questions nondisabled people are afraid to ask and disabled people are tired of answering.
Inside: bad dates, worse dates, weddings, parenthood, microaggressions, WTF moments, scripts readers can steal, sample dating app profiles, and ableist bingo cards nobody wants to win.
Preorder signed copies through Elliott Bay Book Company. For press, publicity, rights, and launch-season event inquiries, contact Larissa Melo Pienkowski at Azantian Literary: larissa@azantianlitagency.com.
Praise for Being Seen
“A much-needed wake-up call for the nondisabled world.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Sharp and thought-provoking memoir… As she writes, ‘nondisabled people, buckle up.’”
—Booklist Starred Review
“Being Seen is a sharp, necessary book. Sjunneson's clarity of thought and entertaining prose illuminate her life and our world. A powerful and resonant reading experience.”
—Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians
“Engaging, unflinching, and at times intentionally uncomfortable, Being Seen is a call to action cleverly disguised as a book.”
—Marieke Nijkamp, bestselling author and editor of Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens.
“With sharpened words aimed squarely at a cultural image that marginalizes disabled women, Elsa Sjunneson is an emerging icon. Being Seen is her unkindest cut; sparing no one from the frank truth of her life as a Deafblind woman and filleting the intersections of identity with her trademark incisive logic and vulnerable memoir. This book will leave scars.”
—Meg Elison, author of Big Girl
“A riotous blend of memoir and cultural criticism that defies expectations on nearly every page. Being Seen persuasively argues that it is not only the disabled body that must adapt to the world, but also the world that must adapt around the disabled body.”
—M. Leona Godin, author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness
“A blend of memoir, media criticism, and cultural critique, Being Seen is both vulnerable and bold. It covers Sjunneson’s particular experiences of everything from sword-fighting to protesting, and looks to media to trace the ways the images of disability in America often stand in stark contrast to lived experience. Most importantly, it is a challenge: an unflinching demand for representation, accessibility and justice.”
—Katie Booth, Author of The Invention of Miracles
For press, publicity, rights, and launch-season event inquiries, contact Larissa Melo Pienkowski at Azantian Literary: larissa@azantianlitagency.com.
For access needs, form issues, or general site inquiries, email snarkbatassistant@gmail.com.