As Ever, Miriam

My new book is now officially available!

“We can’t remember a lot of things on our own. We need people to remember things with us to remember them at all. Without togetherness, memory and history just kind of disappears.” The Sky Is Falling, Alice Sparkly Kat

If you know me or follow my accounts, you likely know I have a new book. It’s officially out and available online. Tomorrow, I leave for my release party in Milwaukee, WI, to celebrate this Saturday in the city where the two women it is about, Charlotte and Miriam, made a significant impact. On November 13, I will do an author talk and book signing at the Hudson Area Library near my home in upstate NY.

Celebrating in a time of ongoing genocides and climate catastrophes, viewable in our feeds and via updates in real-time from friends with reception, feels complex but also meaningful. With this in mind, I keep returning to Alice Sparkly Kat’s piece written last week, The Sky is Falling, as a place of grounding, thinking about memory work and togetherness while facades of structure collapse en masse.

I have a lot to say about this book and the process of getting it done, but for today, with lack of time, having not packed, and on my lunch break, I will share this link to a short interview I did leading up for the Milwaukee event and the blurb from my publisher, OK Stamp Press;

Researched, transcribed, collected, and introduced by Faythe Levine, this book centers on the relationship and lives of Charlotte Russell Partridge (1882-1975) and Miriam Frink (1892-1978). Based on extensive archival and secondary research involving books, magazines, newspapers, and interviews, Levine brings readers into the work of connecting archival traces to tell stories about past lives. The book presents a collection of epistolary sign-offs from Frink’s letters to Partridge across the decades of their working and personal relationships. Levine takes time to provide extensive footnotes that bring context to these brief but rich archival excerpts. She includes reflections on quotidian details, vernacular translations, historical references, photographs, and information about the pair’s contributions to the arts and art education in Milwaukee, WI, and beyond in the early to mid-20th century.

An important part of my memory-making practice and web building is weaving together the layers of people I’ve had the opportunity to connect with over the years so I want to mention how I connected with my publisher, OK Stamp Press. Most importantly, give a nod to their radical mutual-aid-driven publishing model. In 2015 while at ACRE, an artist residency, I met the co-director of OK Stamp Press, M. Wright, who beautifully designed As Ever, Miriam. While at ACRE, I was holed up editing my interview with Merril Mushroom for my last project, Bar Dykes (I have copies if you need one LMK). M and her collaborator Kate Jarboe of the queer-feminist art & design collective AK/OK worked a few desks in the same building and we became friendly and stayed in touch. When considering good fits for my manuscript, I knew M would likely appreciate the content and she set up a meeting with me and maya rae oppenheimer, OK Stamp Press founder and co-director. Their combined care and thoughtfulness and the mutual-aid model of the press resonated with me, and it was settled. And here we are a year later with a beautiful book.

OK Stamp Press operates on the principle that books are communal culture and build relationships. These vary and include relationships between authors and readers, ideas and readers, readers and publishers, ideas and community. We, therefore, disseminate all our book-projects according to a mutual aid principle: reader funds should circulate within reader communities. To acquire one of our books, please follow these steps, which keep all reader funds circulating in the community.

You can learn more about the press on their site, but I will share a bit about the two suggestions of United States-based organizations I made for donations to be funneled towards. Both of these spaces cultivate radical change through community, which I like to imagine would be parallel to the work Charlotte and Miriam did in the early twentieth century. Cactus+ is based in Milwaukee, where the bulk of Charlotte and Miriam’s impact was on the local art community. And, local to me, Kite’s Nest is doing deep, impactful work I deeply admire, and it feels like an extension of the weekend kids’ art classes Charlotte and Miriam offered to community members at their school. However, it is entirely up to the person interested in the book to decide where the funds should go. I’d love to hear where you funneled your donation; if you choose to get a copy, drop it in the comments or DM me!

This is a time of leaning into our togetherness, and I look forward to continuing to do that with the opportunity to use this new body of work to connect with people. I’m available and excited to give talks about the research process and Charlotte and Miriam’s lives. There is also an upcoming exhibition in the fall of 2025, which will focus on their domestic spaces and civic work at Lynden Sculpture Garden in Milwaukee. Please reach out if you would like to host an event, have me talk to your students, or learn more.

“Memory is collective but collective memory is kind of random. We forget things unless we have people to remember our memories with us. We are incapable of remembering things alone just like how we are incapable of responding to the falling sky alone. We force ourselves to remember what we remember urgently because we are afraid that everyone else will forget but, then, people surprise us.” Alice Sparkly Kat