When a vision disorder stole his ability to read, 2005 Boston College graduate Will Dowd found himself exiled from the world of books—until he discovered an unusual path back through the landscape of dreams. Armed with an experimental dream-inception device from MIT, Dowd embarked on a yearlong odyssey into his own unconscious. His new book, The Taste of Rain in Buenos Aires (Etruscan Press, 2026), chronicles 20 dream narratives born from this first-of-its-kind experiment. Part literary experiment, part exploration of consciousness, The Taste of Rain in Buenos Aires reveals how dreams, like books, can become portals to other worlds. A regular editorial cartoonist for The Boston Globe, Dowd’s writing and artwork have appeared in The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe Magazine, Lithub, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for Post Road Magazine. Dowd’s previous book, Areas of Fog, was named a Massachusetts Book Award “Must Read.”