At The Bottom of Everything: Conor Oberst and our Dystopian Digital Age
Publisher
Grand Central; Penguin (2026/7)
Details
The first and only authorized biography of the artist Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes; Desaparecidos) by Emma Kemp.
Press
The Bookseller
Remote Control
Publisher
East of Borneo Books, 2019
Details
Remote*Control is an assemblage of essays, email diaries, experimental syllabi, memes, and observations produced by artist faculty at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Classical typography collides with remnants of video conferencing interfaces, text glitches, and illustration to evoke the disorienting, ad hoc experience of learning and teaching in the COVID era and its subsequent erosion of institutional norms and control. These illustrations shift in resolution as bodies of water diffuse into droplets then congeal into typographic forms. The book was digitally printed with neon pink ink swapped in for the magenta channel, resulting in glowing, saturated imagery reminiscent of on screen color.
Edited by Emma Kemp and Adriana Widdoes.
Designed by Elana Schlenker with Élise Rigollet and Mimi Jiao.
Blue Pool, Cecelia
Publisher
Image Text Ithaca Press, 2018
Details
In June 2017, ITI Press sent writer Emma Kemp and Walters–who had never met–on assignment to Walters’ hometown, a place “with a history of extraction, a town defined by its water… a leaky town in which the cycle of swelling and breaching initiates structural deformations.” Mining newspaper records and bar-stool conversations, Kemp’s writing careens along a damaged trajectory of women’s lives lived along the margins of the Mississippi. Equal parts travelogue, true crime drama and artist’s portrait, Kemp’s riveting and genre-bending text reveals how, in Walters’ photographs, “time shoves itself backwards and forwards, a crooked tideline extending through each girl and woman.”
Press
The New Yorker
Rockhaven: a History of Interiors
Publisher
Which Witch, 2017
Details
A collection of essays inspired by Rockhaven Sanitarium, Crescenta Valley's proto-feminist psychiatric institution founded in 1923. Featuring contributions from writers Allison Noelle Conner, Emma Kemp, Orenda Fink, Johanna Hedva, Suzanne Scanlon, Mady Schutzman, and Adriana Widdoes.
Curated and Edited by Emma Kemp and Adriana Widdoes.
Designed by Elana Schlenker.
Digital Photography by Bridget Batch.
