Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

An Evening with Spencer Ostrander, Paul Auster and Sherma Chambers

Long Live King Kobe: Following the Murder of Tyler Nichols

"On the eve of Christmas Eve..." Paul Auster writes, "Tyler Kobe Nichols collapsed onto the sidewalk with three knife wounds in the front of his torso and one in the back. "His death soon followed. With it, the twenty-one-year-old joined the ranks of young people killed by senseless violence in America. Tyler's death warranted just two paragraphs in the New York Daily News. And yet with each death, a new story begins that is rarely if ever told; one that centers around the fallout from traumatic loss. This story, as Tyler's mother Sherma Chambers keenly observes, is generational, with no clear end in sight.

Long Live King Kobe began with a mistake. Photographer Spencer Ostrander had arrived at the funeral for Tyler believing he was a victim of gun violence, and hoping to include him in an ongoing project Ostrander had created to document the lives of gun victims. Instead, he met Sherma Chambers, and a week later a collaboration, which soon included Paul Auster, had begun--one in which a pair of strangers would join a family in their sorrow.

Thanks to the generosity of the entire Nichols/Chambers family, Long Live King Kobe invites us to join them in their intimate grief in the weeks that followed Tyler's death. The family's response to his murder, including their creation of a foundation dedicated to counteracting street violence with love, is one that presents their tragedy as a means for our society to grow. The Long Live King Kobe Foundation, started by Sherma Chambers, will support nonviolence initiatives to keep youth safe. Proceeds from this book will benefit the foundation.

Spencer Ostrander is a photographer based in Brooklyn. He was born in Seattle, Washington in 1984. The year he turned 21 several people close to him died, one after the other, and he realized he had no tangible images of them to fix in his memory. He began to think about the meaning of photographs. While studying psychology in San Francisco, Ostrander received a Nikkormat 35mm as a gift from a family friend and his interest in the art became an active obsession. He transferred to Parsons School of Design in New York City, from which he graduated in 2010. He went on to assist freelance for a variety of portrait and documentary photographers. Although he abandoned the formal study of psychology, Ostrander's work is deeply informed by a desire to observe closely, to forge human connections, and to intimately understand the world around him. He has recently completed two other books, Times Square in the Rain and Bloodbath Nation (in collaboration with Paul Auster).

Paul Auster is the author of Burning Boy, 4 3 2 1, Sunset Park, The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace, Winter Journal, The invention of Solitude and the New York Trilogy among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Liturature. He is a member of the The American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages.

Sherma Chambers was born on the Island of St, Vincent. She immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 and has lived in Brooklyn ever since. Sherma is the mother of three sons, Shomari, 29, Shayne, 24, and Tyler, who was murdered at age 21 on December 23, 2020. Following Tyler's death, she became the founder and director of Long Live King Kobe, a New York State nonprofit organization. The goals of LLKK are to support the families and friends of victims of violence and to fund outreach programs for troubled youth.

Kareem Eusebe is Sherma and Tyler’s cousin.

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Long Live King Kobe: An Evening with Spencer Ostrander, Paul Auster, Sherma Chambers and Kareem Eusebe