Please join us on Friday, May 31, 6:30pm at Center for Book Arts for an in-person event celebrating the Book Launch of two stunning and provocative new books written and designed by vis lit pioneer Warren Lehrer. Jericho’s Daughter is Lehrer’s reimagining of the biblical tale of Rahab, illuminated with images by acclaimed painter Sharon Horvath, bound in a dos-à dos binding. Riveted in the Word is a dynamic electronic book that portrays the journey of a writer regaining language after a devasting stroke. The night begins with multimedia performance/readings featuring Lehrer with Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said (Jericho’s Daughter), and actor/author/EarSay co-founder Judith Sloan (Riveted in the Word), followed by a short Q&A with Lehrer and collaborators, moderated by CBA Director Corina Reynolds, followed by book signings and festivities.
Seating is limited. Please RSVP.
About the Two Books
Jericho’s Daughter is Lehrer’s reimagining of the biblical tale of Rahab, the Canaanite “harlot” who lived in a mud hut inside the outer brick wall of Jericho. The book is illuminated with original images by acclaimed painter/mixed media artist Sharon Horvath, and is bound in a dos-à dos binding, once used to bind Old and New Testaments together. This anti-war, feminist interpretation of Rahab’s story has taken on even more resonance in light of the current horrific war in Israel and Gaza, which erupted as Jericho’s Daughter was in prepress.
Riveted in the Word is an electronic book inspired by the true story of a woman’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a massive stroke. The multimedia book app, written and designed by Lehrer, places the reader inside the mind of a retired professor as she recalls her journey with Broca Aphasia. This deeply moving story about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles is told with kinetic typography and an original soundtrack by composer, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Griffin. Programmed by Artemio Morales at AltSalt.
Lehrer is launching these works simultaneously, in part to make a case—that both publications are Books. One is very much a physical object, the other exists only as a digital book. Yet, they both employ bifurcated structures, create tactile/haptic reading experiences, and portray lives that have been ripped apart and begun anew.
About the presenters & collaborators
Warren Lehrer is a writer and artist known as a pioneer in the fields of visual literature and design authorship. His books and multimedia projects are acclaimed for capturing the shape of thought and reuniting the oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling with the printed page. Honors include: The 2019 Ladislav Sutnar Lifetime Achievement Prize, 2016 Center for Book Arts Honoree, the Brendan Gill Prize, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, the Independent Publisher Outstanding Book of the Year Award, the International Book Award for Best New Fiction, three AIGA Book Awards, two Type Directors Club Awards, two Design Incubation Awards, a Media That Matters Award, and fellowships and grants from the NEA, NYFA, and the Rockefeller, Ford, Greenwall, and Furthermore Foundations. His work has been exhibited widely and is in many collections including MoMA, L.A. County Art Museum, The Getty Museum, The Walker Art Center, Pompidou Centre, and Tate Gallery. He is also a performer, animator, and has co- written four plays and one opera. Lehrer is a frequent presenter at universities, art and literary centers, and bookstores. He is a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author/Entrepreneur MFA program at SVA, Professor Emeritus at Purchase College, SUNY, Co-Founder with Judith Sloan of EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY.
Najla Said is an actress, playwright, and author of the memoir Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family. The daughter of renown Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, Najla’s own work confronts racism, stereotyping, social and economic inequality, and the specific challenges that face immigrant and second-generation Americans. As an actress, Said has performed Off-Broadway (New York Theater Workshop, The Public, Cherry Lane, New Dramatists, The Lark, and Second Stage), regionally and internationally, and in film and television. After an eight-week Off-Broadway run, Najla continues to perform her solo play Palestine at venues around the world. David Robert Coleman used some of the text from Palestine to create a musical piece performed by the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Daniel Barenboim, on a European tour that included the Albert Hall in London, Salzburg and Lucerne Festivals. Najla collaborated with Vanessa Redgrave on A World I Loved, based on her grandmother’s memoir, which premiered at The Brighton Festival in the UK, and The Miller Theatre in collaboration with The Public Theatre in New York. Her libretto for Mahmoud Fairouz’s Oratorio, Zabur was performed at Carnegie Hall.
Judith Sloan is an award-winning actress, playwright, radio audio artist, and poet whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. Her work has been produced in theatres and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad including: La MAMA ETC, The Public Theatre, The Theatre Workshop (Scotland, Edinburgh Fringe Festival), The Smithsonian Institution, the Market Theatre (Johannesburg). Her commentaries, poetry and documentaries have aired on NYPR, NPR, PRI, BBC, and listener-sponsored stations throughout the U.S. Sloan has received numerous honors including grants and fellowships from NYFA, NYSCA, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Queens Council on the Arts. Her libretto for 1001 Voices: A Symphony for a New America was commissioned by the Queens Symphony Orchestra. Along with Lehrer, Sloan co-authored the critically acclaimed Crossing the BLVD and co-founded EarSay. A frequent guest performer/lecturer in universities throughout the country, she is a member of the Part-Time Faculty at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individual Study, and is working on two new projects: Imperfect Allies: Children of Opposite Sides, a dialogue/performance series in with Najla Said and This is Not A Drill in collaboration with composer Andrew Griffin.
Sharon Horvath creates paintings on canvas and paper that depict invented, animated, composite forms, combine bodily structures with urban, rural, extraterrestrial spaces, explosions, cars, plumbing, and kitchenware. In The New York Times, Roberta Smith describes her exhibit Owls Stare at Paintings’ Busted Eyeballs as “a dense novelistic show that lays before us the important ways memories can figure in art-making.” Sharon has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and is represented in many public and private collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and The National Academy of Design. Her many honors include: the Fulbright-Nehru U.S. Scholar Grant, Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant for Painting, the Jacob H. Lazarus-Metropolitan Museum of Art Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, the Anonymous was a Woman Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Award for Painting, the Edwin Palmer Prize in Painting from the National Academy Museum, and two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants. Horvath earned her BFA from Cooper Union and MFA from Tyler School of Art. She is Professor of Art and Chair of the Painting and Drawing at Purchase College, SUNY. She lives and works in New York City and upstate in Andes, New York.
Andrew Griffin is an award-winning violist, composer, and orchestrator. He has performed in such diverse settings as Saturday Night Live, Radio City Music Hall, the viola section of the New York Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Since 2019, he has held chairs for multiple Broadway shows. His original compositions, arrangements, and orchestrations have also been commissioned by notable ensembles such as the Seattle Symphony Orchestra Chamber Series, Simply Three, Sphinx Virtuosi, the Queens College Orchestra, and Traverse City Dance Company. Prior to Riveted in the Word, Griffin collaborated with Lehrer on the soundtracks for the Five Oceans in a Teaspoon animations.
Artemio Morales is a creative technologist whose interests lie at the intersection of storytelling, art, and technology. A programmer by trade, he is founder of AltSalt, a publisher and promoter of innovative, creative work by alternative voices, as well as Artmayu Studios, a studio dedicated to exploring electronic literature and its capabilities around interdisciplinary, collaborative forms of expression.
