Photo by Mel Nichols at ROOF Books celebration, Zinc Bar, NYC, Nov. 17, 2012.
From 1980 to 1992, I worked extensively on most of the Roof and Segue Books produced during that period. I worked with the publisher James Sherry and the authors and the typesetters and cover artists. The work consisted of getting the manuscript from James and the authors, which was often very hard to procure, making sure it was proofed and edited and ready, then bringing it to Skeezo, the typesetters on 27th Street. They set the galleys on their machines. Then I’d come and pick up the Xeroxes of the galleys, proofread them, and then bring the galleys back for corrections with author’s corrections too. When the final galleys were ready. I would lay out the book by hand. I made an initial dummy for the book and then pasted up the final mechanical on boards with glue or wax. Often as in the case of Hannah Weiner’s and Bruce Andrews’ books, I would be moving around single words or letters or lines of type with an exacto knife to create shapes or odd spacing. The cover was also done by me, but with various artist’s works on them. Then the book would go to the printer and come back by US mail for blues. It was a lengthy and detailed process of production in those days without e-mail or computers to speed things along.
Susan Bee Laufer (at age 9) with David Brinkley on the Huntley/Brinkley Report, NBC, 1961. In the background is her oil painting of "Girl with a Dog," at Galerie St. Etienne, NYC.
Pied bot Charles Bernstein éditions joca seria collection américaine translated by Martin Richet afterword by Jean-Marie Gleize photos by Susan Bee poésie 160 pages 15 x 20 cm 16 € ISBN 978-2-84809-187-7 March 2012 Shade, The Occurrence of Tune, and the preface to Content's Dream with altered photographs by Susan Bee (from the original edition of Occurrence of Tune) More information, and slide show of photos, at web site for éditions joca seria.
Sigmund Laufer, First day of school, Berlin, Germany, 1926
The Brodsky Gallery at Kelly Writers House (at Penn) has an exhibit of the Holocaust etchings by Sigmund Laufer. This show will be up through December 2011. Susan Bee, his daughter, gave a talk about his work this past Thursday and Susan (with my intermittent help) presented a ppt on Laufer's life and work, which we are making available here. A fine discussion, led by Al Filreis's incisive comments, followed.
The Capilano Review Fall 2013 now out
order online