In July of 2026, Steve Lawson and Jessy Randall (author of this post) participated in a Center for Book Arts online class, “Imaginary Books: The Book as Performance,” with instructor Amaranth Borsuk. (Borsuk, as it happens, is the author of the textbook Steve and I use in our half block class.)

With our classmates, we wrote descriptions and “event scores” for imaginary books and then realized at least one of these in some way. Here’s what Steve and I made.

Rest, by Steve Lawson
Description: “A book that captures the feeling of love felt by those no longer on earth.” (The classmate who provided this description did so anonymously. It wasn’t me.) Twelve photographs taken from the point of view of headstones in Colorado Springs’s Evergreen Cemetery. White pages are Yasutomo Asagami paper. One of a kind.

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YOU: A Biography, by Jessy Randall
Description, by Steve: “A biography of whomever is reading the book.” Text: You were born. / You learned to read. / You started reading this book. / Soon, you will be finished. / THE END. Heavy woven paper upcycled from an old Special Collections oversize folder. Edition of 12.