Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer, and curator who focuses on the socially challenged body. Lehrer is best known for representations of people with impairments and those whose sexuality or gender identity have long been stigmatized. Her work has been seen in venues including the National Portrait Gallery, Yale University, the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Frye Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the State of Illinois Museum. Awards include the 2017 3Arts MacDowell Fellowship for writing; 2015 3Arts Residency Fellowship at the University of Illinois; the 2014 Carnegie Mellon Fellowship at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges; and the 2009 Prairie Fellowship at Ragdale. Grants include 2009 Critical Fierceness Grant, 2008 3Arts Foundation Grant, and 2006 Wynn Newhouse Award, as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, University of Illinois, and National Endowment for the Arts. Lehrer’s memoir, Golem Girl, was published by One World/Penguin/Random House in 2020, and she is represented by Regal Hoffman & Associates in New York. She is on faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an instructor in Medical Humanities at Northwestern University.