This book is comprised of six sections, each with an editor who has chosen a theme or idea and several artists who represent that theme. The editors have worked tirelessly and with great respect to create their sections, that we have also referred to as galleries. Think of this as a museum filled with different galleries. The editors have diverse voices, theories and ideas, and backgrounds. You will see emerging artists as well as veterans, who are often highly-respected editors, practitioners, and curators. The choices for editors were very intuitive. This project was destined to be a serial one. The first edition draws heavily on the Italian roots of the fields. You will see two sections dedicated to primarily Italian artists. There is plenty of research and theory about Italian art, its creative spring among other things — and that shows up here, too. As a special addition, Cheryl Penn has written an essay exploring the history of the Bhubezi women and asemic writing. A brilliant piece.
KRISTINE SNODGRASS is an artist, poet, professor, curator, and publisher living in Tallahassee, Florida. She is the author, most recently, of American Apparell from AlienBuddha Press and Rather, from Contagion Press. The proud founder and curator of Women Asemic Artists & Visual Poets (WAAVe), Snodgrass searches to create an online space for women in the asemic and vispo communities to share work, offer support, and network. Her asemic and vispo work has been published in Utsanga (Italy), Slow Forward and featured in Asemic Front 2 (AF2), South Florida Poetry Journal, Voices de la Luna, Brave New Word, and Talking About Strawberries. She is the art editor for SoFloPoJo. Snodgrass has collaborated with many poets and artists and is always searching for new collaborations. You can find some of her writing about collaboration at TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism. Her most recent book, RANK, is published by JackLeg Press (2021).
"This is without doubt an important book. There is so much there! I will study this book. I hope you will continue to publish similar books, or maybe make this a periodical of sorts, publish it once a year. I am no better at predicting the future than anyone else, but I feel certain that the international community of asemic writers will increasingly serve as a powerful area for explorations and expressions by and about women. There are already threads of radical feminism in the expanded history of asemic writing and its ancestors. I haven't attempted any kind of scientific evaluation of this, but it seems to me already that much of the best work currently being produced and circulated under the umbrella of asemic writing is being done by women. If we can identify that currently as a trend, then we can probably also identify it as a characteristic of the practice. Maybe when the dust settles on all of this it will turn out that the asemic movement." - Jim Leftwich