My beloved collaborator, Yael Horowitz, and I recently finished binding our newest artist book, In der mit. ts story took root in the specific local history of Yiddishist chicken farmers in Petaluma, CA and gestures outwards to broader narratives like the impact of McCarthyism on the Jewish left. In the process of writing and drawing and printing we tried to imagine the utopic dreaming of this community, and to look directly at the many causes of its disintegration, from without and within. Speculative writing and art-making allowed us to venture beyond a defeatist narrative of inevitable failure and imagine other possible outcomes that might inform our cultural organizing work today. 

Yael and I will be sharing our fully hatched book at our workshop ‘Chicken and Egg: Which Came First, the Archive or the Story?’ This Saturday, 10:30-11:45am at the Klez Cummington Festival. If you’d like to bring a reading of In der mit to an event near you or online, please be in touch!