Artist Statement

I create books. I make paper. I tend coreopsis, indigo, sunflowers, and flax.

I write with a pencil.

I print on Vandercooks.

I sew end bands; I mend; I case-in with board and cloth.

I carve and strop; I pare and strop.  

Mason Jars among my books:

Indigo sludge

Cicada shells

Rabbits in formaldehyde

My mother’s collection of porcelain cats

I collage images, objects, materials, and texts. I embrace

hybrid forms of writing. I seek

new ways of presenting old literary concepts. I challenge

canons

and taste-making

and other forms of literarily-induced hegemonic oppressions. I invest

in finding collaborators who share

my interest in debunking the myth of singular authorship,

collaborators with stories to tell,

collaborators tickled by black ink on white paper. I write prose with line

breaks and screenplays about poverty and mental illness in Appalachia.

I make novels of unbound folios.

I letterpress print messages by millennials, interrogations of the intersection of sex work and disability politics from the frontlines of the whore revolution, and post cards for Southern queers.

I try to live, print, and bind

by example. I never learn

a skill without passing along

the knowledge. There are actual human body

parts in my body

of work.