Life and Limb Skateboarders Write From the Deep End Book signing and Reading @ New Image Art @ New Image on 1005 N Fairfax July 29, 2004 at 8pm

Edited by Justin Hocking, Jeffrey Knutson, and Jared Maher, with an introduction from Jocko Weyland published by Soft Skull Press

Andy Jenkins and Dave Carnie photo by Aya Muto Andy Jenkins, his son and Lorid photo by Aya Muto David Carnie photo by Aya Muto Life and Limb reading photo by Aya Muto Life and Limb reading photo by Aya Muto Lorid photo by Aya Muto Michael Burnett photo by Aya Muto Skaters for Kerry photo by Aya Muto

“Life and Limb: Skateboarders Write from the Deep End wrestles the gritty passion of skating into one explosive prose piece after another. From Jocko Weyland's heated treatise on the bad blood between skateboarders and rollerbladers to Ed Templeton's lysergic word-romp around his beloved Orange County, the book explores and exploits life on the edge of disaster.”—Flavorpill NYC

Life and Limb is a collection of writing about the art, science, and raw lust for motion that epitomize the culture of skateboarding.  With fiction and essays infused with the energy, drive, and unruliness of the sport, Life and Limb documents life on the edges of experience.  From eating an entire tree on a ten thousand dollar dare, to monkeywrenching a McDonalds, to accidentally setting fire to cemeteries, the pieces in this unique anthology often feature subjects far removed from skateboarding itself, yet sprung from a common source.

In these diverse narratives one finds an iconoclastic sense of creativity fostered by a lifetime spent mostly outside the bounds of team sports. In unexpected and often humorous ways, they express aesthetics common to skateboarders everywhere: a nearly spiritual devotion to a discipline that’s more of a martial art than a sport, an appetite for risk that sometimes borders on the suicidal, and a youthful reluctance to resign one's self to the mundane world of commerce and responsibility. The perfect meeting of pavement and the page, Life and Limb will pin skaters to their couches and leave literary fiction fans with the feeling of flight.

Featuring writing, photography and artwork by Mark Gonzales, Ed Templeton, Michael Burnett, Scott Bourne, Lori Damiano, Dave Carnie, Andreas Trolf, Andy Jenkins, Angela Boatwright, and many more.

Jocko Weyland is the author of The Answer is Never--A Skateboarder's History of the World (Grove/Atlantic, 2002). Jeffrey Knutson is a writer and skateboarder living in Portland, Oregon. Justin Hocking’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Open City, Thrasher, and Many Mountains Moving. Jared Jacang Maher, 23, has been a skatepunk for 14 years. He is a contributing editor for Adbusters Magazine.