SHAHENDA: This is a series of books on smoking dedicated to Shahenda, my great grandmother, whose father used to leave the end of his rolled cigarette burning in the ashtray and leave the room. Some family rumors say that she started smoking at the age of either five or twelve.

Each book takes a different theme related to smoking, but in all cases this is not an anti-smoking nor a self-help project. In this first book, I invited seventeen artists and curators whom I know and admire. Some are old-time friends, collaborators, and colleagues, and some are recent encounters, but with all of them, I shared a smoke and/or  a conversation on smoking. Each participant responded to an invitation I sent them in June 2015, when I stopped smoking after twenty-two years. The contributions range from fiction to personal confessions to drama to satire.