Suzaan Boettger will be at the Passaic County Book Festival on Saturday, June 10, discussing her book Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson, as part of the panel "Unveiling Lives: Crafting Compelling Biographies for All Ages" at 3:15 p.m. Boettger will speak alongside panelists Donna Cangelosi, Selene Castrovilla, Lucia McMahon, Louis Picone, and Paul Semendinger. 

The Book Festival runs from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

This first biography of the major American artist Robert Smithson, famous as the creator of the Spiral Jetty, deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success. Featuring copious illustrations never before published of early work, it offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures.

"Only someone who has immersed themselves in the life and art of Robert Smithson for forty years could have written a biography as deep and engaging as Inside the Spiral. Suzaan Boettger illuminates the artist’s religious thought, examines the complexities of his gender identity, and takes a psychoanalytic lens to his sources and esoteric symbolism, bringing coherence to our understanding of this remarkably complicated artist, his body of work, and his writings. A monumental achievement."—Jonathan Fineberg, University of the Arts, author of Modern Art at the Border of Mind and Brain

"Suzaan Boettger’s long-awaited Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson is the first biography of this 'enantiomorphic' artist, whose oeuvre encompassed geological and sacred time alongside the moment of the snapshot, the 'dematerialized' theorizing and mapping of the non-site alongside the absolute site-specificity—viewable from outer space—of the Great Salt Lake. Boettger reveals fascinating and hitherto unexplored aspects of Smithson’s earliest formation, including his status as a 'replacement child' for a dead older brother, while her fearless exploration of the artist’s Christological bent, his hermeticism, and his difficult navigation of sexuality yields nuanced psychological insight. Unburdened by academic jargon, the work is supported by extensive reference to Smithson’s writings, notes, interviews, library, and other records, of which Boettger has long been recognized as the foremost scholar."—Judith Rodenbeck, University of California, Riverside

"This book sheds important new light on Robert Smithson. Meticulously researched and wide-ranging in scope, it explores the intricate connections between Smithson’s personal history and his art. While revealing a great deal of new information about Smithson’s life and psychology, Suzaan Boettger also engages with his art in a focused and detailed way and writes about individual works with great perceptiveness. Readers will come away from this book with a fresh and enlarged understanding of Smithson’s life and art."—Jack Flam, editor of Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings