X Artists’ Books

X Artists’ Books is a small press based in Los Angeles, founded by Alexandra Grant and Keanu Reeves, dedicated to publishing thoughtful, beautiful, and artist-centered books that fit within and between genres. Since 2017, we have collaborated with artists, authors, curators and designers whose work addresses substantive questions around gender and identity, the politics of art, war and protest, and the mapping of social inequality onto landscape. The resulting books provide unique resources for teaching, learning, discussion, and research around these vital topics, as well as representing varieties of art practice, writing, and design.

Alexandra Grant, Everything Belongs to the Cosmos, X Artists' Books, 2025 © Alexandra Grant

Everything Belongs to the Cosmos is a publication that captures six painted works from 2024 by Los Angeles– and Berlin–based painter Alexandra Grant, based on texts by Polish writers and poets Anna Adamowicz, Krystyna Dąbrowska, Julia Fiedorczuk, Bianka Rolando, Olga Tokarczuk, and Urszula Zajączkowska. The six participating writers and poets were commissioned by Grant for this body of work in 2021 and early 2022 with the assistance of poetry editor Marcin Orliński and translated from Polish into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

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Clara Obligado, all that grows: nature and writing, X Artists' Books, 2025 © Clara Obligado

all that grows: nature and writing is the English-language translation of Todo lo que crece: naturaleza y escritura by the Argentinian author Clara Obligado. The book chronicles the author's upbringing in Argentina, her exile to Spain, and her resulting reconciliation of place, memory, loss, and growth. Through botanical and natural metaphors as well as frank recollection of events, the book explores the passage of time across different hemispheres and dialects. As the author navigates shifts in landscape and language, her writing becomes a shelter and a form of time travel, mirroring the natural world’s ability to invent and reinvent itself.

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Vincent Valdez, edited by Denise Markonish, Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream..., X Artists' Books with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Contemporary Art Museum Houston, 2024 © Vincent Valdez, edited by Denise Markonish

Through his work across many media, Houston and Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Valdez bears witness to the world around him, chronicling an America at the margins. Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… features work from over twenty years and writings addressing Valdez’s work through the lens of politics, history and humanity. Valdez’s approach to imaging his country, its people, politics, pride, and foibles includes boxing, lynchings of Mexican Americans, border walls, politics, greed, the Ku Klux Klan, and the failings and triumphs of American society.

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Edited by Cassandra Coblentz, Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean, Published by X Artists' Books with Oceanside Museum of Art as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, presented by Getty, 2025 © Edited by Cassandra Coblentz

Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean, edited by Cassandra Coblentz, brings together diverse writers, scientists, artists, activists, and thinkers to investigate social and environmental issues throughout the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, including Angela Mooney D’Arcy and Charles Sepulveda, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Ziying Duan, and Aaron Katzeman. The authors and contributors are leading figures in the field of Blue Humanities—an emergent discipline ranging from historical to visual to cultural and literary studies on oceans—and they bring a rich range of expertise to the project

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