A conversation with Brian Trapp
Schedule
Thu Oct 23 2025 at 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
6996 Powers Boulevard, Parma, OH 44129 | Parma Heights, OH
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Join us at our Parma-Powers Branch for a conversation with Brian Trapp, author of "Range of Motion."Register: https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/14360453
Trapp is director of disability studies at the University of Oregon, where he also teaches fiction and nonfiction. His work has been published in the Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Longreads, Brevity, and elsewhere. He has been a Steinbeck Fellow, a Borchardt Scholar, and an Elizabeth George grant recipient. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, with his twin brother, Danny.
Transforming perceptions of disability and interdependence through tender attention to detail, "Range of Motion" is wrenching, beautiful and sharply comic.
Twin A and Twin B. That’s what Michael and Sal’s neuroscientist father irreverently calls them. The boys are born moments apart, but baby Sal’s brain scan shows a bleed. He has severe cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities.
Told through multiple perspectives—Gabe, the boys’ father; Hannah, their mother; and Michael—this debut novel follows the Mitchell family from the boys’ infancy to the cusp of adulthood as they all try to interpret what Sal, who speaks only eight words, is thinking and feeling. The twins’ upbringing in suburban Ohio is familiar and unfamiliar, ordinary and extraordinary, as this middle-class family navigates the challenges and rewards of nurturing a special-needs human with a killer dimple who is utterly and winningly himself: sweet, stubborn, mischievous, impenetrable, and above all, very funny.
Michael feels that he alone understands Sal and devotes himself to giving his brother a voice in the “normal” world until he grows up and can’t “hear” his twin anymore—his worst fear. Their mother, a teacher who has given up her career for caregiving, and their father, who is determined to succeed in his research, also struggle with the balance of sacrifice and duty and love, especially as Sal’s health deteriorates. Before Michael leaves for college, the twins spend a final week together at a summer camp for people with disabilities, and Sal does something that changes their lives forever.
📕 Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.
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Where is it happening?
6996 Powers Boulevard, Parma, OH 44129, 6996 Powers Blvd, Cleveland, OH 44129-5472, United States, Parma HeightsEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
