In Brian Trapp’s debut novel, Range of Motion, the paths of twin brothers Sal and Michael diverge at birth. A brain bleed leaves Sal with severe cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities.  The novel is partly autobiographical. Brian’s own twin brother Danny, to whom he dedicates the book, also had cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities.  Transforming perceptions of disability and interdependence through tender attention to detail, the book is wrenching, beautiful, and sharply comic.

Brian is the director of disability studies at the University of Oregon, where he also teaches fiction and nonfiction and edits the Northwest Review. His work has been published in the Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Longreads, Brevity, and elsewhere. His essays have been listed as Notable in Best American Essays and anthologized in the Best of Brevity.

He has received a Steinbeck Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Oregon Arts Fellowship, a Sewanee Writer’s Conference Borchardt Scholarship, a Tin House Summer Residency, and a Taft Fellowship from the University of Cincinnati, where he completed his PhD.