The Eaton Fire of 2025 leveled our house—along with our entire Altadena neighborhood. I made a pop-up book wherein objects I found in the rubble literally rise from the rubble on the page.

Merrill Feitell
Precious Things, 2026

Handmade, interactive, pop-up artist book with inserts, custom pocket, and N-95 mask. 5.75” x 5.75” x1.75”

• Binding: Stitched and glued signatures secured in lay-flat cardboard binding.
• Text & Images: Original essay inkjet printed on vellum; original photography inkjet printed on matte (pages) and glossy (inserts) photo paper.
• Engineering: Interactive pop-up mechanism and structural inserts constructed from inkjet photos mounted on card stock.

Endpapers display objects melted and made unrecognizable by fire; front hosts built-in pocket with N-95 mask, as objects featured in this volume were rendered toxic by Eaton Fire; text throughout printed on vellum to give sense of delicate tissue paper

I’m so happy to discover that my essay “Personal Protective Equipment” from Switchyard Magazine was included in the Memoir Monday Round-Up, “a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web” curated by Sari Botton. Happy to be included with so many great writers! You can subscribe to Memoir Land at https://substack.com/@memoirland Thanks, @switchyardtulsa, @tgenoways, @maryanne_andrei, @saribotton!

Writers’ Program Faculty Reading + Publication Party at the Skirball Center. Wednesday 6/7/2023 at 7pm. FREE but you have to register for the event here:

https://www.uclaextension.edu/writing-journalism/creative-writing/course/publication-party-writing-7004

Web Exclusive Interview: Merrill Feitell

Belatedly barking about my short essay and pics that appeared in the extremely cool journal Places, along with work by Myriam Gurba, Moriah Ulinskas, and Carolyn Castaño. More than 100 days since the Eaton Fire, and though they’ve started clearing properties, much of the mess of it persists on the ground and on my daily to-do list. https://placesjournal.org/article/photographs-from-altadena-after-the-eaton-fire