Amy Jean Porter

The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook: A Collection of Stories with Recipes
I contributed 80+ drawings of “food” (sometimes a camel, sometimes a building, sometimes oatmeal) for this delicious book edited by Natalie Eve Garrett. Featuring contributions and recipes by artists and writers including Elizabeth Alexander, Edwidge Danticat, Joy Garnett, Lev Grossman, Laurie Hogin, Yiyun Li, Ed Ruscha, and Elissa Schappell, among many others. (powerHouse Books, 2016)
 
176 pp, hardcover
$30 at powerHouse

”[The] recipes . . . are insightful and surprising—with stories that mix art-making, writing, and cooking. Each ingredient in a soup, color used in an illustration, and word modifying a sentence provides a trace of deep-seated emotional experience.” —The Guardian

”[The] book tells a collective story about more than just how to prepare food. It tells the story of what it sometimes means to be human: hungry, heartbroken and hopeful.” —Los Angeles Times

”The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook is far from anything traditional and that's exactly what makes it so inspiring. There are proper ingredients and measurement listings, yes, but more important are the imaginative, artful narratives conjured up around everyday foods.” —Vogue

When Up and Down Left Town
The third volume in Cabinet magazine’s “24-Hour Book” series, this collaboration with Matthea Harvey imagines a world where Up and Down, connected by horizontal zippers to the Middle, suddenly unzip themselves, leaving humans to experience a world without contrails or dachshunds. (Cabinet, 2016)

54 pp, softcover
$12 at Cabinet

Of Lamb
A collaboration with the poet Matthea Harvey. Of Lamb is an irreverent and irresponsible retelling of the nursery rhyme, “Mary had a little lamb.” In our version, Mary spends time in a madhouse, Lamb favors slippers and the two fall in love and contemplate having half-human half-sheep offspring. (McSweeney’s, 2011)

120 pp, hardcover
$22 at McSweeney’s

”Of Lamb is a work of such subtle, haunting, spellbinding beauty it is virtually impossible to describe it. Fantastical and yet, so strangely, achingly ‘real’ in its tracking of love, loss, grief, and again love—an astonishing collaboration between a poet (Matthea Harvey) and an artist (Amy Jean Porter) that defies all categories except Unique.” —Joyce Carol Oates

”The gorgeous gouache illustrations by Porter bring Harvey’s epiphanies, non sequiturs and startling images to life, resulting in a book with surprises and delights at every turn. It's equal parts bewildering and eye-opening, and certainly unlike any other graphic novel published this year.” —Dan Kois, NPR Books

”What a beautiful book! Matthea Harvey’s keen and subtle redaction of a tragic tale that finds within itself traces of the comforting levity of nursery rhyme is perfectly complimented by Amy Jean’s exquisite paintings that surprise with sudden counter-currents of tone and delight with surreal invention. You'll want to frame every page.” —Dean Young

”Turning the pages of this book is like turning a kaleidoscope—endless delight and surprise out of a few loose elements endlessly recombined. Part nursery school, part nursing home, a copy of this book belongs in both, and in every home where odd and tender treasures reside.” —Mary Ruefle