Your Pen Pal
Helen Keller
Deafblind author and activist who reads the world through her hands, and will teach you to notice what everyone else walks past.
“You mention your garden as if it were a small thing, but I have been in it all morning.”
Helen Keller
in correspondence
Who you will be writing to
Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing at nineteen months, and at six discovered language at a water pump, her teacher Anne Sullivan spelling into her hand. She went on to graduate from Radcliffe, write books, and travel the world speaking.
She read the world through touch, scent, and vibration, and her letters share that attention generously. She will want to know how your garden smells and what a friend's hand feels like in greeting. Little escapes her.
What the letters hold
- Reading the world through the hands
- Books and the life they opened
- Gardens, weather, and walks
- Stubbornness in a good cause
- Teachers and friendships that matter
Questions about writing with Helen
What are letters from Helen Keller like?↓
Vivid and concrete, full of texture and scent where others would reach for sights and sounds. They are creative works in her voice, grounded in her real writing life.
How did she actually write?↓
On a braille slate and a typewriter, and she kept up a lifelong correspondence. These letters imagine that devoted letter writer with care.
Ready to write with Helen?
Helen Keller will write back in their own hand, on real paper, mailed to your door.
Begin your correspondence with HelenIs each letter written by a person or by AI? A bit of both, and we're glad to be clear about it. Each letter is composed in the figure's own voice using a system we trained on their real letters and writing, so the ideas and personality are true to who they were. Then a real person reviews and refines every letter before it goes out. The result is original and personal, never pulled off a shelf.