Adam Pottle
Author, Teacher, and Advocate.
Adam Pottle's work spans multiple genres, from fiction and poetry to drama and creative nonfiction. His recent books include the horror novel Apparitions, the children's book Butterfly on the Wind, and the musical fantasy script The Black Drum.
His writing has won or been shortlisted for numerous awards, including National Magazine Awards, Saskatchewan Book Awards, the ReLit Prize, and the Acorn-Plantos Award. His groundbreaking play The Black Drum is the world's first all-Deaf musical and was performed to raves in Toronto and France in 2019. He was the 2021-22 Writer in Residence at Sheridan College and is a 2022 Warner Bros. Discovery Access screenwriting fellow.
Adam earned his PhD in 2016 and has taught English, creative writing, and professional communication since 2006. When not writing or teaching, he is at the boxing gym, the library, or the park with his wife Deborah and their dogs Valkyrie and Loki. He lives in a small town outside Saskatoon.
“I wouldn’t be a writer if I wasn’t Deaf.”
“What is the purpose of language if not to get each other laughing?”
“Is life as big as she makes it out to be? Or is it small and simple?”
“Love is freedom.”
Butterfly on the Wind
2025 High Plains International Book Award - Children’s Picture Book
A magical picture book about a Deaf girl who creates a butterfly with Sign Language and sends it on a journey around the world.
On the day of the talent show, Aurora's hands tremble. No matter how hard she tries to sign, her fingers stumble over one another and the words just won't come. But as she’s about to give up, she spots a butterfly.
Using her hands to sign the ASL word for "butterfly," Aurora sends a magical butterfly of her own into the world, inspiring Deaf people across the globe to add their own. The butterflies grow in numbers and strength as they circle back to Aurora, bolstering her with the love and support of her worldwide Deaf community.
"Deaf picture book creators author Adam Pottle and artist Ziyue Chen combine powerful text and sweeping art into a moving story of resilience and self-belief."
Works
BUTTERFLY ON THE WIND
BUTTERFLY ON THE WIND (2024)
A magical picture book about a Deaf girl who creates a butterfly with Sign Language and sends it on a journey around the world.
On the day of the talent show, Aurora's hands tremble. No matter how hard she tries to sign, her fingers stumble over one another and the words just won't come. But as she’s about to give up, she spots a butterfly.
Using her hands to sign the ASL word for "butterfly," Aurora sends a magical butterfly of her own into the world, inspiring Deaf people across the globe to add their own. The butterflies grow in numbers and strength as they circle back to Aurora, bolstering her with the love and support of her worldwide Deaf community.
"Deaf picture book creators author Adam Pottle and artist Ziyue Chen combine powerful text and sweeping art into a moving story of resilience and self-belief."
APPARITIONS
APPARITIONS (2023)
VIOLENCE WAS HIS FIRST LANGUAGE.
After years of imprisonment, a Deaf teen escapes his father’s basement. Bloody, alone, and without language, he stumbles through the Saskatchewan prairie until he lands in an isolated psychiatric facility, where he meets Felix, another Deaf teen, who eagerly teaches him Sign Language. As the two grow closer, the ambitious and cunning Felix begins to see his pupil less like an individual and more like a mind that he can mold in his own image, and as his ego grows, his plans to break free from the facility become increasingly more dangerous.
THE BLACK DRUM
THE BLACK DRUM (2019)
How do Deaf people experience music? And how can we use that music to tell a story?
The Black Drum is the world’s first all-Deaf musical, using Sign Language and Signed Music all the way through. This play, which was produced in Toronto in June 2019 by the Deaf Culture Centre and Soulpepper Theatre, follows Joan, a woman grieving her wife, Karen. Joan’s grief pulls her into a bizarre world where her tattoos come alive and an evil presence called the Minister rules over the land. To defeat the Minister and free herself from grief, Joan must learn to express her own music.
Reviews
VOICE: ON WRITING WITH DEAFNESS
Voice: On Writing with Deafness (2019)
In Voice, Adam Pottle explores the crucial role being deaf has played in the growth of his imagination, and in doing so presents a unique perspective on a writer’s development. Born deaf in both ears, Pottle recounts what it was like growing up in a world of muted sound, and how his deafness has influenced virtually everything about his writing, from his use of language to character and plot choices. Salty, bold, and relentlessly honest, Voice makes us think about writing in entirely new ways and expands our understanding of deafness and the gifts that it can offer.
Reviews
THE BUS
THE BUS (2016)
Set on a single day on April 21, 1941, The Bus is told by eight different narrators: six mental patients, the Nazi doctor who must kill them, and the man who must burn their corpses. Herded onto a bus with thirty-five of their peers and unable to see out the painted windows, the patients are transferred from the Scheuern institution to the euthanasia clinic in Hadamar, Germany.
The Bus was meant to be my first novel. It was originally titled Smoke, and was set to be published in 2012, but it was deemed too violent, and so it was pulled. I continued to revise the novel, and pared it down to a concentrated novella that maintained the violence but also balanced it with more varied and involved characters. I submitted the novella to Quattro Books' 2015 novella contest, and won. My prize was a publishing contract.
From inception to publication, The Bus took over eight years to complete. To research the book, I traveled to Germany and visited the Hadamar memorial site, where I saw the shower room and the dissection rooms; the staff also allowed me to see some of the original patient files. Many other books and sources influenced me, from Elie Wiesel's Auschwitz memoir Night to Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy's film The Tribe.
ULTRASOUND
ULTRASOUND (2016)
Ultrasound tells the story of a couple, Miranda and Alphonse, and what they go through when they attempt to conceive a child. Alphonse, a Deaf man, wants the child to be deaf; Miranda, who has some hearing, doesn’t care if it’s hearing or deaf. A devastating exploration of the consequences of eugenics, Ultrasound asks the question, “In what circumstances would someone not want a child because it was normal?”
Reviews
MANTIS DREAMS
MANTIS DREAMS: THE JOURNAL OF DR. DEXTER RIPLEY (2013)
A satire that mocks both academia and ableism, Mantis Dreams is told through the sardonic voice of Dr. Dexter Ripley, an English professor working in Saskatchewan. Dexter, a wheelchair user with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, works to expose disability discrimination in medicine, government, education, and family; the problem is he fails to recognize his own toxicity. With his scathing vitriol, Dexter reveals the ugly, exploitative side of privilege and the discomforting effects of internalized ableism.
Reviews
BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS
BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (2011)
In this jarring collection, Adam Pottle cracks open the world of disability, illuminating it with an idiom that is both unsettling and exhilarating. His subjects are gritty and multifarious: amputee sex swingers; drug-related shootings; institutionalized adolescents coerced into sterilization. Difficult as their circumstances may seem, Pottle's denizens learn to navigate the world with creative resolve, even defiance, searching for an identity that includes their disabilities rather than spites them. His poems scrape our nerves; they test and undermine poetic forms, challenging our own sensibilities in the process.
Reviews