Essay by Katherine Preston, Author of "Out With It"

Check out this link to a very moving essay by Katherine Preston, author of the book Out with It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice. The essay is about her experience promoting her book and having to speak publicly as a stutterer. Here's an excerpt:

I watch my audience obsessively when I speak. I watch them laugh, and cry, I see people nod their heads fervently and whisper unheard asides to their friends nearby. The times that I have stuttered the most I have been met with steady eyes and standing ovations. My habitual reaction is to yearn for fluency, and yet the times that I’ve stuttered the least have resulted in yawns and the bored tapping of fingers on blue screens. I have realized that people want to see the “character” of my book up on stage. They want to see stuttering, to feel its curious intensity. I want that too. I want to acknowledge that stuttering exists, that it is nothing to be frightened of. I want to use the candid truthfulness of my speeches to build bridges between us. I aspire to give them what they want, and yet I also crave the rhythmic seduction of language that I find much easier to create on the page. I slip back into my habitual wish to control the atmosphere created by my words.