An American Memoir
A fearless, genre-defying hybrid memoir that refracts fear, personal identity, and the fading Jim Crow South through a prism of Greek myth, mid-century pop culture, and visual art.
In August of 1963, 11-year-old white David boards a segregated bus on his first solo journey and forms an immediate bond with a precocious Black boy named Theseus. What begins as a youthful effort to understand fear fractures into dimensions defined by the absurd.
Soon enough, their route collides with philandering, masquerading deities, the stubborn confusion of growing up, and a Purgatory processing station perched atop a giant prune in near-Earth orbit. The boys run for the office of U.S. President, become a warm-up act at a Las Vegas-style nightclub before Las Vegas is a style, and reckon with a hidden truth: David’s mother’s wartime affair with author James Agee.
Designed as both a literary narrative and a collectible artist’s book, this refined second edition features 27 chapters interwoven with full-color visual art, typographic expression, and experimental poetry. Recognized in juried museum art exhibitions as a physical art object and developed as the foundation for an American Playwriting Foundation-honored stage adaptation, the work documents a search for friendship, family history, and truth.
Original poems paired with landscape photography from Bryce Canyon National Park, measuring enduring human devotion against deep geologic time and eroded stone.
A critical investigation into 1830s Arkansas frontier court dockets, marking the initial development and formal introduction of the theory of Forensic Persistence.
Rhythmic prose and graphic composition reflecting mid-century jazz cadences.
"Publishing where the current meets the page—anchoring procedural history, absurdism, and the physical architecture of the book."
Riparia.US produces volumes that function simultaneously as literary interventions and tactile artifacts. We focus on limited-run monographs, forensic historical documentation, and works exploring the boundaries between narrative structure and the visual archive.
Riparia.US LLC
Independent Fine Art & Literary Press
Galena, Illinois • Amity, Arkansas
Occasional dispatches regarding forthcoming editions, rare folios, and stage productions. Published infrequently.