Downloadable Press Kit
Images, Audio & Video Clips, Press Release
Upcoming Live Events
Friday May 10, 3pm (ET)
Contemporary Artists’ Book Conference
Lehrer is part of the panel “Neurodivergent Literacy”
along with Ari Wolff and John Bonanni.
The conference is remote and Fee.
Register here.
Thursday May 16, 4-5pm (ET)
Print (Magazine) Book Club
Warren discusses Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word with designer/author icons Debbie Millman and Steven Heller.
The Book Club is remote and Free.
Register here.
***DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH***
Friday May 31st, 6:30pm
Center for Book Arts, Manhattan.
With Performance/readings by
Lehrer and Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said, and actor/author Judith Sloan. Followed by Q&A and signing with Lehrer, Sharon Horvath, and other collaborators. Moderated by CBA Director Corina Reynolds, 28 West 27th St. NYC, 3rd Floor. Admission is free but seating is limited so please register in advance.
Admission is Free but seating is limited, so please Register here.
***DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH***
Saturday June 1st, 3pm
Topaz Arts, Queens.
With Performance/readings by
Lehrer and Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said, and actor/author Judith Sloan. Followed by Q&A and signing with Lehrer, Sharon Horvath, and other collaborators. Part of Topaz Arts’ Spring Salon. 55-03 39th Avenue in Woodside, NY.
Admission is Free but seating is limited so please Register here.
July 18-21, 2024
Electronic Literature Organization (Un)Linked Conference and Media Festival
Warren Lehrer, Artemio Morales, Judith Sloan present
“Riveted in the Word: Portraying the Experience of Broca Aphasia in a New Work of Digital Fiction”
***DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH***
Saturday August 3, 7pm
Blue Hill Library. 5 Parker Point Rd, Blue Hill, Maine. Sponsored by Word Literary Festival in coordination with Blue Hill Books. With Performance/readings by Lehrer and Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said, and actor/author Judith Sloan. Followed by Q&A with Lehrer, Said, Sloan, and signing by Lehrer. Event page with more information. Admission is Free but seating is limited so please Register at this link.
Warren Lehrer – 3 Books: A Performance/Reading/Celebration with Collaborators.
Wednesday Oct 9, 4-6pm Pratt Institute, Alumni Reading Room, Pratt Library
Featuring Reading/Performances with Adeena Karasick (Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings), Najla Said (Jericho’s Daughter), Judith Sloan (Riveted in the Word)
More info to come
The Visual Literature of Warren Lehrer
Wednesday Oct 23, 5pm
Visiting Artist Colloquium University of Wisconsin, Madison
________________
Early Praise
“The power of biblical tales resides not only in their longevity and history, but in their capacity to be retold with profound relevance to contemporary circumstances. Lehrer’s text and Horvath’s images revive the story of Rahab with resonance for unfolding events in the 21st century, but also emphasizing a feminist revision to the stigmatization of her self-determination and independence. Rahab’s entreaty to end the cycles of violence that have been part of the long history of Israel and Gaza could not be more relevant. This book will provide its own enduring legacy as a document of this moment in time.”
Johanna Drucker, leading visual literature scholar, author of countless books including Testament of Women.
“As a work of visual literature, Jericho’s Daughter epitomizes Warren Lehrer’s style, which is partly to say it generously accommodates the aesthetic of his collaborator, Sharon Horvath, whose mixed-media collages and assemblages contribute much of the book’s visual appeal… Though the book can be read in one sitting, the experience is surprisingly immersive… The first side of the book slips seamlessly between narrative and dialogue without character names or even quotation marks. The book is not a script; it is a complete work of visual literature, and the reading is the performance. Each character is identified by typeface, the size and style of which also express qualities of their speech, but the typography is understated compared to other works by Lehrer. The materiality of the images, which literally frame the written dialogue, brings to life the setting where much of the narrative plays out — Rahab’s home, which the narrator tells us is lined with colorful fabrics and permeated with incense. Or perhaps the setting is Rahab’s mind, where the vivid but fragmented imagery evokes memory… Like the book itself then, the imagery is both archival (pieced together from fragments) and narrative.
Jericho’s Daughter operates allegorically. In Lehrer’s revision, the biblical matriarch is all too relatable. Rahab is inundated with misinformation and fearmongering by elites and disenfranchised from politics. Her dreams of running a textile business are put on hold while she scrapes by with dangerous, demeaning work. She is street-smart, but her horizons are limited… If the narrative blurs biblical and contemporary time, the dos-á-dos book structure would seem to sharpen such divides. The conventional telling of Rahab’s story indeed follows a two-part structure: before and after conversion, before and after marriage. But the critical revision in Jericho’s Daughter is to refuse such binaries. The book separates the accepted biblical story (side one) from the speculative addition of Rahab’s diary (side two) only to attenuate the difference. Echoing the archived objects that accompany Rahab’s diary in the book’s second half, these forms act as portals or windows that connect the accepted narrative with the revision. As a feminist revision, Jericho’s Daughter goes even further. It is not enough for Rahab’s agency to catalyze her transformation from whore to mother. Rather, the binary itself must be deconstructed. Instead of symbolizing faithful conversion, Rahab’s diary reveals the ambivalence, grief, and trauma — as well as resilience and hope — that one might expect from someone whose entire community was annihilated and who survived by joining the perpetrators.
Jericho’s Daughter was begun before the most recent bloodshed in Israel and Gaza. It deals with millennia-long metanarratives and cycles of violence. That Horvath’s artworks seem simultaneously contemporary and archaic speaks to the universal themes she and Lehrer address. One of those universal themes, perhaps what resonated most with me, is the unknowability of our parents’ lives. By revising the story of Joshua, Jericho’s Daughter offers a better understanding of intergenerational trauma. The surreal juxtapositions and glimpses of narrative that haunt Horvath’s visuals — and rupture the firewall between archive and narrative, memory and history — give lie to the tidy two-part narrative we have inherited. This improved model of trauma is badly needed in a world with so much conflict. Would there be fewer wars if the story of Jericho had been told from Rahab’s perspective instead of Joshua’s? Perhaps that is wishful thinking, but surely we can treat survivors and refugees and disenfranchised people everywhere with greater empathy.”
Levi Sherman, Artists’ Book Reviews
“With the artist Sharon Horvath, Lehrer has transformed the biblical tale of Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, into a work of art. On one side of the dos-à-dos, Lehrer tells the story of Rahab’s hiding of two Jewish spies in her mud hut outside the walls of Jericho. The other side is a catalogue displaying artifacts (images made by Horvath) and facsimiles of Rahab’s secret diaries from her later life as Israelite wife and mother. Four-color throughout and printed on Mohawk Superfine paper, this first edition displays high production values. The book’s primary type family, Input Serif, and its sizes lend a children’s book air to the pages, which only further emphasizes the power of Rahab’s character and her response to the violence and sexuality of her condition. Lehrer’s and Horvath’s collaboration was completed prior to the events of 7 October 2023 and ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. In light of those events, Rahab’s ancient plea for an end to the cycle of blood and death has become all the more present.”
Robert Bolick, Books on Books
________________
Bios
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. About her 2024 solo exhibit “Small Myriad” at Lori Bookstein Projects, NYC, Benjamin Degen writes, “Horvath’s paintings contain the stuff of everyday life. Her common materials connect with the uncommonness that exists in all things.” In The New York Times, Roberta Smith describes Horvath’s 2019 exhibit “Owls Stare at Paintings’ Busted Eyeballs” at Pierogi Gallery, as “a dense novelistic show that lays before us the important ways memories can figure in art-making.”
Horvath has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Provincetown, and internationally, and is represented in many public and private collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and The National Academy of Design. Her countless awards and grants include the Fulbright-Nehru U.S. Scholar Grant, John Simon 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, New York, and her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. Horvath is Professor of Art and Chair of the Painting and Drawing Department at Purchase College, SUNY. She lives and works in New York City and upstate in Andes, New York.
www.sharonhorvath.com
Written and designed by Warren Lehrer. Images and objects by Sharon Horvath.
ISBN: 979-8-9897802-0-4. Fiction/Art. Published by EarSay. June 1, 2024.
6.75” x 9” x 50 pages. Wraparound dos-à-dos binding; 4-color throughout, printed by HP Indigo in
LIC, NY, on Mohawk Superfine, an acid-free paper. This first edition is handbound with string and buttons by Elizabeth Castaldo.
Jericho’s Daughter is Lehrer’s anti-war, feminist reimagining of the biblical tale of Rahab, the Canaanite “harlot” who lived in a mud hut inside the outer brick wall of Jericho. One of only a few characters who appear in the Old and New Testaments, Rahab is lauded by both Jews and Christians as a reformed sinner and a symbol of faith in a singular, all-powerful God. That was the version Lehrer learned in Hebrew school. In this reconsideration, he places Rahab center stage, revealing a very different perspective of the enigmatic character and the meaning of her story.
The beautifully produced, full-color book is illuminated with original images and objects created by Sharon Horvath. Her paintings and collages are made from many materials including pigment, polymer, ink, paper, canvas, wood, plastic packaging, adhesives, and magazine photos from the 1950s through 2023. The book is bound in a bifurcated, dos-à dos binding, once used to bind Old and New Testaments together. Part 1 of Jericho’s Daughter takes a closer look at Rahab’s interaction with two Jewish soldiers sent to scout out the military readiness of Jericho, and the deal she struck with them. Part 2 consists of a Catalogue of Artifacts (and facsimiles), including translated excerpts of Rahab’s secret diaries written during her decades as an Israelite wife and mother.
The writing, design, imagemaking, and collaboration (which included Horvath making images in reaction to Lehrer’s text, and Lehrer writing in response to Horvath’s images) were completed prior to October 2023 and the latest horrific war breaking out in Israel and Gaza. The gruesome killings from both sides makes Lehrer all the more determined to tell this story—and make a plea (as Rahab does within the book) for an end to the cycle of blood and death. A percentage of the proceeds from Jericho’s Daughter will go to Women Wage Peace, the largest grassroots peace movement in Israel.
EarSay is publishing Jericho’s Daughter simultaneously with Lehrer’s first fully electronic book, Riveted in the Word, inspired by the true story of a writer’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke. Both books are based on short stories written by Lehrer and employ haptic, bifurcated structures that reveal lives that have been ripped apart and begun anew.
sample spreads
from Part 1: Jericho’s Daughter
from Part 2: Catalogue of Artifacts
Downloadable Press Kit
Images, Audio & Video Clips, Press Release
Upcoming Live Events
Friday May 10, 3pm (ET)
Contemporary Artists’ Book Conference
Lehrer is part of the panel “Neurodivergent Literacy”
along with Ari Wolff and John Bonanni.
The conference is remote and Fee.
Register here.
Thursday May 16, 4-5pm (ET)
Print (Magazine) Book Club
Warren discusses Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word with designer/author icons Debbie Millman and Steven Heller.
The Book Club is remote and Free.
Register here.
***DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH***
Friday May 31st, 6:30pm
Center for Book Arts, Manhattan.
With Performance/readings by
Lehrer and Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said, and actor/author Judith Sloan. Followed by Q&A and signing with Lehrer, Sharon Horvath, and other collaborators. Moderated by CBA Director Corina Reynolds, 28 West 27th St. NYC, 3rd Floor. Admission is free but seating is limited so please register in advance.
Admission is Free but seating is limited, so please Register here.
***DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH***
Saturday June 1st, 3pm
Topaz Arts, Queens.
With Performance/readings by
Lehrer and Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said, and actor/author Judith Sloan. Followed by Q&A and signing with Lehrer, Sharon Horvath, and other collaborators. Part of Topaz Arts’ Spring Salon. 55-03 39th Avenue in Woodside, NY.
Admission is Free but seating is limited so please Register here.
July 18-21, 2024
Electronic Literature Organization (Un)Linked Conference and Media Festival
Warren Lehrer, Artemio Morales, Judith Sloan present
“Riveted in the Word: Portraying the Experience of Broca Aphasia in a New Work of Digital Fiction”
***DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH***
Saturday August 3, 7pm
Blue Hill Library. 5 Parker Point Rd, Blue Hill, Maine. Sponsored by Word Literary Festival in coordination with Blue Hill Books. With Performance/readings by Lehrer and Palestinian-American actor/author Najla Said, and actor/author Judith Sloan. Followed by Q&A with Lehrer, Said, Sloan, and signing by Lehrer. Event page with more information. Admission is Free but seating is limited so please Register at this link.
Warren Lehrer – 3 Books: A Performance/Reading/Celebration with Collaborators.
Wednesday Oct 9, 4-6pm Pratt Institute, Alumni Reading Room, Pratt Library
Featuring Reading/Performances with Adeena Karasick (Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings), Najla Said (Jericho’s Daughter), Judith Sloan (Riveted in the Word)
More info to come
The Visual Literature of Warren Lehrer
Wednesday Oct 23, 5pm
Visiting Artist Colloquium University of Wisconsin, Madison
________________
Early Praise
“The power of biblical tales resides not only in their longevity and history, but in their capacity to be retold with profound relevance to contemporary circumstances. Lehrer’s text and Horvath’s images revive the story of Rahab with resonance for unfolding events in the 21st century, but also emphasizing a feminist revision to the stigmatization of her self-determination and independence. Rahab’s entreaty to end the cycles of violence that have been part of the long history of Israel and Gaza could not be more relevant. This book will provide its own enduring legacy as a document of this moment in time.”
Johanna Drucker, leading visual literature scholar, author of countless books including Testament of Women.
“As a work of visual literature, Jericho’s Daughter epitomizes Warren Lehrer’s style, which is partly to say it generously accommodates the aesthetic of his collaborator, Sharon Horvath, whose mixed-media collages and assemblages contribute much of the book’s visual appeal… Though the book can be read in one sitting, the experience is surprisingly immersive… The first side of the book slips seamlessly between narrative and dialogue without character names or even quotation marks. The book is not a script; it is a complete work of visual literature, and the reading is the performance. Each character is identified by typeface, the size and style of which also express qualities of their speech, but the typography is understated compared to other works by Lehrer. The materiality of the images, which literally frame the written dialogue, brings to life the setting where much of the narrative plays out — Rahab’s home, which the narrator tells us is lined with colorful fabrics and permeated with incense. Or perhaps the setting is Rahab’s mind, where the vivid but fragmented imagery evokes memory… Like the book itself then, the imagery is both archival (pieced together from fragments) and narrative.
Jericho’s Daughter operates allegorically. In Lehrer’s revision, the biblical matriarch is all too relatable. Rahab is inundated with misinformation and fearmongering by elites and disenfranchised from politics. Her dreams of running a textile business are put on hold while she scrapes by with dangerous, demeaning work. She is street-smart, but her horizons are limited… If the narrative blurs biblical and contemporary time, the dos-á-dos book structure would seem to sharpen such divides. The conventional telling of Rahab’s story indeed follows a two-part structure: before and after conversion, before and after marriage. But the critical revision in Jericho’s Daughter is to refuse such binaries. The book separates the accepted biblical story (side one) from the speculative addition of Rahab’s diary (side two) only to attenuate the difference. Echoing the archived objects that accompany Rahab’s diary in the book’s second half, these forms act as portals or windows that connect the accepted narrative with the revision. As a feminist revision, Jericho’s Daughter goes even further. It is not enough for Rahab’s agency to catalyze her transformation from whore to mother. Rather, the binary itself must be deconstructed. Instead of symbolizing faithful conversion, Rahab’s diary reveals the ambivalence, grief, and trauma — as well as resilience and hope — that one might expect from someone whose entire community was annihilated and who survived by joining the perpetrators.
Jericho’s Daughter was begun before the most recent bloodshed in Israel and Gaza. It deals with millennia-long metanarratives and cycles of violence. That Horvath’s artworks seem simultaneously contemporary and archaic speaks to the universal themes she and Lehrer address. One of those universal themes, perhaps what resonated most with me, is the unknowability of our parents’ lives. By revising the story of Joshua, Jericho’s Daughter offers a better understanding of intergenerational trauma. The surreal juxtapositions and glimpses of narrative that haunt Horvath’s visuals — and rupture the firewall between archive and narrative, memory and history — give lie to the tidy two-part narrative we have inherited. This improved model of trauma is badly needed in a world with so much conflict. Would there be fewer wars if the story of Jericho had been told from Rahab’s perspective instead of Joshua’s? Perhaps that is wishful thinking, but surely we can treat survivors and refugees and disenfranchised people everywhere with greater empathy.”
Levi Sherman, Artists’ Book Reviews
“With the artist Sharon Horvath, Lehrer has transformed the biblical tale of Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, into a work of art. On one side of the dos-à-dos, Lehrer tells the story of Rahab’s hiding of two Jewish spies in her mud hut outside the walls of Jericho. The other side is a catalogue displaying artifacts (images made by Horvath) and facsimiles of Rahab’s secret diaries from her later life as Israelite wife and mother. Four-color throughout and printed on Mohawk Superfine paper, this first edition displays high production values. The book’s primary type family, Input Serif, and its sizes lend a children’s book air to the pages, which only further emphasizes the power of Rahab’s character and her response to the violence and sexuality of her condition. Lehrer’s and Horvath’s collaboration was completed prior to the events of 7 October 2023 and ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. In light of those events, Rahab’s ancient plea for an end to the cycle of blood and death has become all the more present.”
Robert Bolick, Books on Books
________________
Bios
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. About her 2024 solo exhibit “Small Myriad” at Lori Bookstein Projects, NYC, Benjamin Degen writes, “Horvath’s paintings contain the stuff of everyday life. Her common materials connect with the uncommonness that exists in all things.” In The New York Times, Roberta Smith describes Horvath’s 2019 exhibit “Owls Stare at Paintings’ Busted Eyeballs” at Pierogi Gallery, as “a dense novelistic show that lays before us the important ways memories can figure in art-making.”
Horvath has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Provincetown, and internationally, and is represented in many public and private collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and The National Academy of Design. Her countless awards and grants include the Fulbright-Nehru U.S. Scholar Grant, John Simon 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, New York, and her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. Horvath is Professor of Art and Chair of the Painting and Drawing Department at Purchase College, SUNY. She lives and works in New York City and upstate in Andes, New York.
www.sharonhorvath.com