Ryan Knighton

On his eighteenth birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a congenital disease marked by a progressive pathology of night-blindness, tunnel vision and, eventually, total blindness. In 1995 he completed a BA (Hons) in English at Simon Fraser University and then, after teaching in South Korea for a year, began his MA, again at SFU, completing it in 1998. That same year, at the age of twenty-five, he was hired by Capilano College's English Department to teach contemporary literature, pop-culture, rhetoric and creative writing. Knighton has also traveled across Canada to give public readings and lectures. Ryan Knighton is in the last stage before total blindness.