The Dissolution of Freddie (Hardcover) by X Press

This is third X Press book, a collaboration between writer Juliet Wittman and book designer Judy Anderson.

Judy Anderson: "Interpreting Wittman's short story I attempted to visually express the jarring terrifying dream sequence that invades the mundane journal notations of the woman narrator. The clear separation between the violent dream sequences and her own life becomes unclear until they visually collide at the end of the story. This becomes a strong statement about the violence that exists in the world and the ease in which we tune it out after watching the evening news."

Juliet Wittman: "In the early 1980s, I interviewed several refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. I had read about the terrible repression in those countries, but there's something extraordinarily intense about hearing stories of murder from witnesses, and torture from those who experienced it. I was unable to sleep for weeks, but my friends' lives went on as usual: They chatted about dinner parties, books and movies, spouses and dates. Meanwhile the immigration authorities sent these refugees back to the very countries where their lives were in danger.

"'The Dissolution of Freddie' arose from the contrast between everyday, middle-class American life and the suffering of people in other countries -often at the hands of governments we support. The particulars have changed, but worldwide suffering - and our blind refusal to face or understand it -remains."

Juliet Wittman is the author of Breast Cancer Journal: A Century of Petals, the theater reviewer for Westword (a Denver weekly), and teaches in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Colorado.