Gretchen E. Henderson

Traces of many books masque themselves inside Gretchen E. Henderson's "Galerie de Difformite." With the head of a novel and the body of a poem, this extraordinary work interrogates the nuanced concepts of ability/disability, voyeurism/exhibition, deformity/normality--all with a wry sense of self-representational humor. Lushly designed with crowdsourced images, text deconstructions, and enough narrative tomfoolery to make Tristram Shandy blush, the "Galerie" is both funhouse and curiosity cabinet, art catalogue and "choose your own adventure." This bestiary of the novel-as-poem-as-essay-as-art grows outside of the bounds of the Book and, in the process, redefines deformity for the digital millennium.