Familiar Fables

Familiar Fables is an artist book collaboration with speculative fiction writer Abbey Mei Otis. Together, Otis and I researched the literary and print history of Aesop’s fables and began a collaboration on interspecies intimacies. Abbey wrote a selection of contemporary fables based on chosen themes and I combined them with wood block prints, ornamental caps I designed, and letterpress type. Endpapers and cloth bound artist book all echo historic children's book forms.

Abbey Mei Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a mongrel trash robot, an anarchist, a storyteller and a firestarter, raised in the woods of North Carolina. She loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster (Small Beer 2018) was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award.