His father worked as a professor of government at the University of New Hampshire and wanted to study the Cold War, so he moved his family to Helsinki, Finland, from 1958 to 1960.
Kuusisto's blindness is a result of a condition called "retinopathy of pre-maturity," where the eyes' retinas do not fully develop in the third trimester of pregnancy.
[2] Kuusisto's mother had to "fight with the local district to gain [him] admission to an ordinary first-grade classroom," since it would be "another thirty years before people with disabilities are guaranteed their civil rights in the United States".
[2] Stephen Kuusisto graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is also a Fulbright Scholar.
Some of his other works include Only Bread, Only Light (2000), a collection of poems that portray the strangely beautiful world of visual imagery and extraordinary yet delicate language.
Currently, he is in the process of writing a collection of prose poems for Copper Canyon Press entitled Mornings with Borges.
Stephen also founded a foundation Kaleidoscope Connections LLC with his wife Connie which helps to raise awareness of disability.
Of Planet of the Blind, Donna Seaman of Booklist Magazines writes "... as Kuusisto muses on how blindness is perceived by the sighted world and relates his fearsome and wonderful adventures before and after he finally teamed up with a guide dog, his incredible resolve, good humor, and irrepressible love for life remind us of the awesome power of the imagination, and the true meaning of vision."
Written in the form of linked essays, Kuusisto offers his story of living a life by ear, developing an aural landscape so that he hears "layers of space" rather than sees them—Reed Elsevier of Publishers Weekly contends: "A crowd is not a crowd to him; instead it is a series of sound points, indicating space, pace, rhythm and mood"—and of overhearing the world taking place about him.
Eavesdropping becomes an art for Kuusisto, the attentive, active listener and keen observer that he is, and the memoir is composed of countless anecdotes recounting his experiences doing just that.
[6] Donna Seaman of Booklist writes of his memoir: As Kuusisto recounts further seminal moments and improbable adventures, he presents exquisitely rendered soundscapes that capture aspects of the world most of us barely register, from the storm of traffic to the cacophony of our myriad machines to the songs of trees.
As he goes "sight-seeing by ear" in places as diverse as Iceland and Venice, and celebrates the music and literature that sustain him, Kuusisto foregrounds the aural realm and evinces great tenacity and trust in his candid tales of life as an acute and contemplative listener in a loud and hectic world.