Amy Gerstler's most recent book of poems is IS THIS MY FINAL FORM (Penguin Random House, April, 2025). Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic Magazine and Paris Review. In addition to poetry she writes plays, journalism and art criticism
Amy Gerstler, Benjamin Weissman
READINGS
NOVEMBER 1st, 2025, 5:00 pm
Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, art criticism, journalism and plays. She has published thirteen books of poems, a children’s book and several collaborative artists books with visual artists. In 2019, she received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts CD Wright Grant. In 2018, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Scattered at Sea, a book of her poems published by Penguin in 2015 was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her book Bitter Angel won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, The Atlantic, American Poetry Review, Poetry, several volumes of Best American Poetry and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry.
Publications
Books: Index of Women, Dearest Creature, Ghost Girl, Medicine, Nerve Storm, Crown of Weeds, Bitter Angel and others.
https://www.amygerstler.com/about
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/227754/amy-gerstler/
Benjamin Weissman is a visual artist and writer of fiction, plays, and occasional criticism. His most recent book is Headless. He teaches Advanced Drawing at UCLA and Graduate Studio Critique at Otis College of Art and Design. His first short play, JÖRG, recently appeared at the Elysian Theatre.
His works of fiction have been collected in Headless, Akashic Books, Brooklyn, NY (2004) and Dear Dead Person, Serpent’s Tail, London, United Kingdom (1994). Weissman’s collaborative works with Yutaka Sone were presented at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA (2014), and his collaborative works with Paul McCarthy were presented at Galleria civica di arte contemporanea, Trento, Italy (2008) and toured to Zacheta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw, Poland (2009).
His work has been featured in exhibitions such as Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley, 1970-1990, California State University, Northridge, CA (2014); The Lateral Slip, Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California, Riverside, CA (2005); 100 Artists See God, The Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (toured 2004-2006); Alpenblick: Contemporary Art and the Alpine, Kunsthalle Vienna, Vienna, Austria (1998); The Grammarians, Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange, CA 1994; and The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (1993), and his work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Benjamin Weissman frequently uses conceptual frameworks and repeated visual motifs to create his paintings, drawings and sculptures. A prolific writer, the artist’s work sometimes combines fantastically colored pictorial space with textual elements drawn from a variety of sources. Weissman’s compositions explore and deconstruct myths, reframing viewers’ understanding of common objects and everyday practices.