Author and Hope College professor Heather Sellers remembers the first book she made as a child.

"It was called Arnold the Crab and Other Stories and was a story, a poem and an essay," she said.

Since then, she has written countless other works and had a total of nine books published with more on the way.

When she was diagnosed with a unique neurological disorder called face blindness, her family told her it was "just another thing, like Arnold the Crab."

Sellers' disorder prohibits her from remembering a human face and from telling one apart from another.

"I can see the face but if I turn away I can't remember. It's a memory problem not a vision problem, [but] if I explain this to someone, they think I'm nuts."

Heather Sellers Schuler Books and Music, Lansing Oct. 26 & 27, 7 p.m. schulerbooks.com, (517) 316-7495

She says understanding how her brain is affected by her disorder requires a PhD in neurology, as there is so little is known about face blindness.

"I was never going to tell anybody. I didn't even know about it and I was determined to keep whatever was wrong with me a secret."

However, when a friend helped Sellers realize that it was not a mental illness but rather an identifiable disorder, she said, "I thought, I have to tell the world!"

In her latest book and first work of non-fiction Sellers does just that. You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know addresses loving her "really, really flawed family" and coming to terms with her neurological disorder. Sellers has three books of poetry, three books on the craft of writing, a children's book, a collection of short stories, and now adds You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know to her new category of non-fiction.

"I felt like I had to do it," she says, referring to her need to expand into a new genre. "It's a lot bigger deal to tell your own story and the whole thing is about keeping things secret. The only way of making sense of this terrible ... situation was that I had to tell it."

In addition to addressing her life with face blindness, Sellers also explores her family life.

"[My family] doesn't believe in it. They can't get their minds around it. My family is very smart but ... they don't understand it," Sellers said about her condition.

She goes beyond facing her disorder to explore the everyday aspects of life with difficult family members who are unable to come to terms with the fact that Sellers must rely on "voice, jewelry, shoes, hair, gaits [or] walks" to identify who someone is rather than their face.

"I'm really good at [identifying] people from the back who are walking away," she says with a laugh.

While Sellers' disorder may have been preexisting since birth, she also maintains that she was born a writer. Sellers has her next five years planned out for her writing and publication schedule and, while neither of her upcoming works addresses her mysterious neurological condition, Sellers hopes they will "help someone else figure out how it is we get through [it]."

 

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Other Literary Events

by Christopher Carver

Graphic Artist David Small and Sarah Stewart
Oct. 22, 6 p.m.
Jackson District Library, Carnegie Branch
Free
myjdl.com/carnegie, (517) 788-4087

If you're not convinced the comic book, ahem, graphic novel is the real deal, look no further than David Small. The author is a shining symbol of those artists (Chris Ware anyone?) who are breaking down the oh-so misguided wall between "serious" art and the comic strip you read in the newspaper as a kid. Detroit author Small tackles his childhood in Stitches - a painfully wrought memoir of a young man's path and dedication to life as an artist. As a teenager, David woke up after what he thought was a routine operation unable to speak, muted by the removal of one of his vocal chords. The story chronicles what his parents never told him: that he had cancer and wasn't expected to live through the surgery, so he runs away from home at 16 to become an artist.

Mixed Media Drawings and Figurative Teapots by Carrie Anne Parks
Baber Room Exhibitons, CMU Library
Through Oct. 24
library.cmich.edu/exhibits

Carrie Anne Parks' exhibition Fable and Form: A Study in Narrative Imagery is for those of you who live to cross-train in your experience with art. In this case, Parks-working outside her usual medium of sculpture-draws from the imagery of Aesop's Fables and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The elaborate borders of illuminated manuscripts inspire her drawings, on display until Oct. 24.

 

East Lansing Public Library: Tom Weschler & Gary Graff
Oct. 12 7-8:30 p.m.
Meeting Room
elpl.org/events

As a member of the early Bob Seger camp, Tom Weschler was privy to behind-the-scenes. Weschler's time with Seger made its way (via photographs) into his book Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger. This Michigan Notable Book selection, co-authored by music journalist Gary Graff, is a celebration of the "hard-gigging, heavy-traveling, reputation-making early days."