Golem Girl: The Looking Glass Looks Back coming to Woodstock Opera House

Portraitist Riva Lehrer will appear at the Woodstock Opera House at 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 17. for a talk and book signing as part of the Creative Living Speaker Series produced by the Woodstock Fine Arts Association.

Lehrer, born with spina bifida, grew up being judged for her appearance. Disability was the focus of her work and the engine for her career until the met a community of self-assured disabled performers, writers and academic theorists. There she discovered a new framework in which to view the impaired body.

Her unique persona, “Golem Girl”, became the title of her award-winning memoir. It is her aesthetic, intellectual, political and emotional response to disability. She advocates for “radical visibility” as a teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Attendees of the Creative Living Speaker Series are invited for coffee and conversation at Stage Left Cafe, beginning at 9 a.m.