First Tuesdays Presents Warren Lehrer

When: November 10, 2015
Where: Terazza Cafe, 40-19 Gleane St. Elmhurst, NY 11373.
Time: 7:00 — 8:30 PM (open-mic sign up at 6:30)
Cost: $5 suggested donation.
More Information: Richard Jeffrey Newman

Warren Lehrer is a writer and artist acclaimed internationally as a pioneer in the fields of visual literature and design authorship. He’s received many awards for his books and multimedia projects including the Brendan Gill Prize, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, three AIGA Book Awards, a Media That Matters Award, and fellowships from NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Rockefeller, Ford, and Greenwall Foundations. His work is in many collections including MoMA, LA County Art Museum, The Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, and Tate Gallery. Lehrer is also a performer and has co-written four plays, and co-written and co-composed one opera. He is a frequent lecturer, keynote presenter at universities, festivals, conferences, art and literary centers. Lehrer is a full professor at SUNY Purchase, and a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author grad program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. Together with Judith Sloan, Lehrer co-founded EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens dedicated to uncovering and portraying the lives of the uncelebrated in print, on stage, on the radio, in exhibitions, concert halls, electronic media, and through educational programs in public schools, community centers, and prisons: EarSay. Lehrer will present a performance/reading of his illuminated novel A LIFE IN BOOKS: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley containing 101 books within it, all “written” by his (fictional) author protagonist who is in prison looking back on his life and career. A LIFE IN BOOKS has been honored with 9 awards (so far) including The 2015 International Book Award for Best New Fiction, The 2014 Independent Publisher’s Outstanding Book of the Year Award for Most Original, and The 2014 Best New Fiction Award (USA Best Books). 

Lehrer’s books, acclaimed for capturing the shape of thought and reuniting the traditions of storytelling with the printed page, include: A Life in Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (Goff Books); Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a New America (W.W. Norton) with Judith Sloan, The Portrait Series: a quartet of men (four book series, Bay Press); GRRRHHHHH: a study of social patterns (Center for Editions) with Sandra Brownlee and Dennis Bernstein; FRENCH FRIES with Dennis Bernstein (Visual Studies Workshop); i mean you know (Visual Studies Workshop), and versations (EarSay). Lehrer also edited and designed Dennis Bernstein’s Special Ed: Voice from a Hidden Classroom (NY Quarterly Books), and they are currently collaborating on a book of poems entitled Stretch Marks. 

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.