Recto/Verso: conversations beyond art

An interview podcast where I talk with artists about their creative practice and latest projects, going deep into the quiet and invisible aspects of art production, self-inquiry, and personal discovery.

A Body of Art: Essays and Abstractions in recto and verso

A hybrid essay collection in the form of an artist's portfolio, where methods of art-making serve as metaphors for self-discovery and transformation. Bookbinding, filmmaking, theater, printmaking, performance art, and painting are explored as allegories for struggles with identity, purpose, and philosophical unrest. This manuscript weaves art history and art appreciation with personal essays that grow more experimental as the artist-writer shifts from figurative writing into abstraction, culminating in literary fauvism, interdisciplinary work, and impassioned expressionism. Four essays from this collection have won contests or prizes. This manuscript made it to the semi-final round and been long-listed at several small press contests and was a finalist in the Electric Book Award of 2025.

“Liz Asch's genre-bending collection takes readers on a journey between art, writing, and the body through stories of gender, sexuality, artistic practice, and the range and intensity of relationships between women and the world. Asch weaves a deep and rich new lexicon about why art matters. Intimately. An unforgettable book. A triumph of artistic passion. A lovesong to making art.”   —Lidia Yuknavitch

METAPHOR MEDICINE: Rewild your Imagination to restore your soul

Metaphor Medicine is a book based on my podcast, BODY LAND METAPHOR MEDICINE, an archive of guided meditations informed by deep image poetry, surrealist art, and acupuncture theory. This standalone is the start of a series.

This book takes the reader into their imagination in an artful way to feel better in their body and psyche. This method is widely permissive, creative, somatic, and restorative. I call it “embodied surrealism” or “salutary storytelling.” This is the kind of book anyone might keep in their backpack or on their nightstand, read a chapter a la carte (in order or at random), or reach for as part of a morning or nightly routine, to feel more centered, grounded, and calm. With each story, you get a dose of metaphor as medicine, the kind of somatic storytelling that takes you somewhere magical, and coaxes you into a trippy, relaxed, aligned place, and trains you to self-regulate, all while stoking the imagination, cultivating a deeper sense of belonging, and nurturing the mind-body connection.

Metaphor Medicine is estimated to be 50-60,000 words. I’ve been working on it for many years at various residencies and it’s up to 45,000. Just a little ways to go!

FUTURE GHOSTS

Future Ghosts is a memoir in essays on personal ghosts, and how they can haunt or heal us. Drawing on mortality, mental illness, spiritual connection, and somatic healing, from the voice of a Jewish girl growing up amidst the wreckage of the Holocaust who is coming of age queer during the AIDS crisis in the American South. It centers on the quandary of how to craft a meaningful life when the world around us, and sometimes within, feels fractured beyond repair. Several chapters from this collection have won essay contests or prizes. This manuscript was long-listed at Dzanc in 2025.

One of My Kind

One of My Kind is a lesbian will-they-wont-they, slow burn, comedic romance set in NYC in the mid-1990s. In this intimate story, a cast of imperfect, lovable twentysomethings builds a family of friends with humor and grit against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis. This LGBTQ+ work of literary/upmarket fiction is 250 pages and 78,000 words. This standalone novel is the first of a series. Co-writers Liz Asch and Alix Grande are actively seeking representation.