How are the new non-invasive fetal gene tests affecting women’s experiences of pregnancy and childbearing? How might they change our personal and social feelings about disabilities such as Down syndrome?

These questions hover in the background of George Estreich’s award-winning memoir about his family and life with daughter Laura, who has Down syndrome. He ponders them briefly, with insight and literary elegance, in the Afterword of the new paperback edition of The Shape of the Eye, and at greater length in his series of essays for the Center for Genetics and Society blog Biopolitical Times (1, 2, and 3).

George Estreich is a writer and at-home dad living in western Oregon with his family. He has published two books: Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body, an award-winning collection of poetry, and The Shape of the Eye, a book about raising his daughter Laura, who has Down syndrome. George is also a regular guest contributor to Biopolitical Times, the blog of the Center for Genetics and Society, where he has written a series on marketing fetal gene tests (1, 2, and 3), as well as "Of Monsters and Men," about The Amazing Spider-Man, and "On Vampires and Chromosomes," about the Twilight books. His other short prose includes “The Shadow Family,” an essay about living in Australia published in Superstition Review, and “Art By and For the Lost,” about graffiti in Melbourne, published in the online journal Eureka Street. His B.A. is from the University of Virginia, his M.F.A. from Cornell University.