Nyle DiMarco wears many hats: model, dancer, activist, actor, producer. But above all else, he’s a trailblazer. As the first Deaf person to win both The CW’s America’s Next Top Model and ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, he has brought mainstream visibility to his underrepresented community and sparked necessary discussions about Deaf representation in entertainment, not just onscreen but behind the camera as well.

In his new memoir Deaf Utopia, co-written with Robert Siebert, DiMarco opens up about his journey from a multigenerational Deaf Italian-American family in Queens to his work in Hollywood. Throughout, DiMarco deftly explores his own queer identity, which he discovered in early adulthood, and what it means to be Deaf in contemporary society.