Lisa Pearson with Constance Lewallen

Founder and publisher of Siglio Press Lisa Pearson joins curator and Rail Editor-at-Large Constance Lewallen. We conclude with a poetry reading from Adam DeGraff.

In this talk

About Siglio

Siglio publishes uncommon books that live in the rich and varied space between art & literature. It is a small, fiercely independent press driven by its feminist ethos and its commitment to writers and artists who obey no boundaries, pay no fealty to trends, and invite readers to see the world anew by reading word and image in provocative, unfamiliar ways. Siglio books—authored by Joe Brainard, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Karen Green, Dorothy Iannone, Ray Johnson, Jess, Nancy Spero, Cecilia Vicuña, among many others—have received devoted readerships as well as critical accolades from New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and Bookforum among many others. Siglio has also earned two AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers awards for book design, and a French Voices Award for Excellence in Publishing and Translation.

Siglio was founded in 2008 in Los Angeles by Lisa Pearson and moved in 2016 to the Hudson River Valley. You can read the Siglio manifesto “On the Small & Contrary,” (originally published in the American Book Review), a set of short essays in Tupelo Quarterly’s Forum on the Feminist Poetics of the Archives, as well as interviews by Lisa Mecham in The Rumpus, by Steve Heller on IMPRINT, by Thomas Evans (part one and part two) on Artbook.com, and more at The Believer Logger, Essay Daily, and VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts.

Lisa Pearson

Lisa Pearson is the founder and publisher of Siglio, an independent press dedicated to published uncommon books that live in the rich and varied space between art and literature. She is the editor or co-editor of several books, including those by Nancy Spero, Dorothy Iannone, Mirtha Dermisache, Joe Brainard, and Robert Seydel as well as It Is Almost That: A Collection of Image+Text Work by Women Artists & Writers.

More on Lisa Pearson

• sigliopress.com

Constance Lewallen

Constance Lewallen is emeritus curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. As Matrix curator there from 1980-88 she organized over 75 small contemporary art exhibitions. As Senior Curator from 1998 to 2007, she curated many major exhibitions, including Joe Brainard, A Retrospective, 2001; Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), 2001; Everything Matters: Paul Kos, a Retrospective, 2003; Ant Farm (1968-1978), 2004 (co-curated with Steve Seid); A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s, 2007. And, in 2011 State of Mind: New California Art ca. 1970, co-curated with Karen Moss. All toured nationally and internationally and were accompanied by catalogs. Her recent books published by UC Press include: 500 Capp Street: David Ireland’s house and Bruce Nauman; Spatial Encounters (co-author Dore Bowen). Currently, she co-curated with Ted Mann Stephen Kaltenbach: The Beginning and The End, at the Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis, and Reese Palley Gallery (with Jordan Stein), at Cushion Works, San Francisco. Lewallen is Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.

In the Rail: Constance Lewallen

The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have Adam DeGraff reading.

Adam DeGraff

DeGraff’s most recent book is Wherewithal a selected poems edited by Anselm Berrigan. He hosts the Kith & Kin reading series in Astoria Queens with Tyler Burba, teaches Poetry at St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows Queens and, with Genevieve George, looks after two daughters in Sunnyside Queens.

Related

• Wherewithal (Subpress) (spdbooks.org)

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