What: Inside The Lazarus Project, an exhibition of photographs by Velibor Božović that pair with the novel written by UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Artist-in-Residence Aleksandar Hemon.

When/Where: UNT on the Square, Feb. 27 (Friday) to March 27 (Friday). Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1-5 p.m. Monday through Friday with extended hours to 8 p.m. Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

Where: 109 N. Elm St., Denton

Cost: Free, open to the public

What else:

• Opening reception is 5:30-7 p.m. Feb. 26 (Thursday). Both Hemon and Božović will attend. Free and open to the public.
• UNT's Department of English and Institute for the Advancement of the Arts present Aleksandar Hemon in conversation with Dallas author Ben Fountain at 7 p.m. March 5 (Thursday) at the Dallas Institute of Humanities & Culture, 2719 Routh St., Dallas. Free.

More information: Find out more about the gallery at untonthesquare.unt.edu. Find out more about Hemon here.

DENTON (UNT), Texas – A photography exhibition at UNT on the Square digs deeper into The Lazarus Project, a novel by this year's Artist-in-Residence, and gives a behind-the-scenes look at the collaboration that went into creating the novel.

Writer Aleksandar Hemon is the 2014-15 Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Artist-in-Residence. For his 2008 novel, The Lazarus Project (a National Book Critics' Circle Award and National Book Award finalist), Hemon worked with photographer Velibor Božović. Some photos were included in the book but many more of the photos will be shown in the free exhibition from Feb. 27 (Friday) to March 27 (Friday) at UNT on the Square, 109 N. Elm St., Denton. As part of his residency, Hemon will also participate in a book reading and discussion in Dallas on March 5 (Thursday).

The Lazarus Project deals with the real-life death of Lazarus Averbuch, a young Jewish immigrant shot by Chicago's chief of police, George Shippy, in 1908. In the novel, a writer and a photographer go back to Lazarus' roots and attempt to understand the places he left behind. During a research trip to Poland, western Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia, Hemon and Božović worked together to find images that would authentically represent the characters and their actions in the novel. Approximately 30 photos will be on display at the gallery in downtown Denton.

"We discussed what Rora, the fictional photographer in the book, would photograph," Božović said. "We observed the world around us and sometimes – this I only realized in retrospect while looking at my contact sheets – I would photograph in character, as if Rora took over the camera and snapped pictures on his own."

Božović added that the exhibition will offer insight to both those who have read the novel and those who have not.

"The exhibition will reveal more of a collaboration between the writer and the photographer and I would like to imagine that some of those visitors will pick up The Lazarus Project and read it again," he said. "For those that haven't read it yet, I hope that the exhibition makes them do it."

In addition to the exhibition, Hemon will participate in community events including a reading and discussion with Dallas author Ben Fountain. Hemon and Fountain, a PEN/Hemingway award winner for his story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, will be at the Dallas Institute of Humanities & Culture, 2719 Routh St., at 7 p.m. March 5 (Thursday). A reception will be followed by a reading at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available on the street and in a parking lot next door to the institute. The Wild Detectives Bookstore of Dallas, a locally operated independent bookstore, will sell the authors' books at the event.

UNT on the Square hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1-5 p.m. Monday through Friday with extended hours to 8 p.m. Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. There is no admission to the gallery, which is open to the public.

About Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, as well as The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, Love and Obstacles and The Book of My Lives. Hemon has worked as a waiter, canvasser, bookseller, bike messenger, as well as a supervisor at a literacy center, a writer for Radio-Sarajevo Youth Program and a teacher of English as a second language. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Esquire, Granta, The New York Times, Playboy, McSweeney's, TriQuarterly, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, Tin House, Ploughshares and The Paris Review, among others. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award, and, most recently, a 2012 USA Fellowship. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters.

About Velibor Božović

Velibor Božović grew up in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. When he was in his 20s, the country of his youth became a war zone and he spent the duration of the siege of Sarajevo honing his survival skills. In 1999, Božović moved to Montréal where he worked for eight years as an engineer in the aerospace industry. He gave up his engineering career to become a photographer. Božović completed a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts at Concordia University. He is the recipient of the Roloff Beny Foundation Fellowship in Photography, the Bourse de Maîtrise en Recherche from FRQSC - Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture Quebec and Concordia International Mobility Award. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Cuba, Canada and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Descant, International Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Granta, BH Dani and other publications.

About the Institute for the Advancement of the Arts

Launched in 2009, the UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts (IAA) aims to showcase, support and advance excellence in the visual, performing and creative literary arts at UNT, among its faculty members and in conjunction with their renowned colleagues and collaborators. The three central components of the Institute are UNT on the Square, the IAA Faculty Fellows program and the IAA Artist-in-Residence program. Past IAA artists-in-residence have included Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga; nationally acclaimed opera composer Jake Heggie, who wrote Ahab Symphony, which premiered at UNT in spring 2013; visual and performance artist Nick Cave, who featured brightly colored horse soundsuits at the premiere performance of Heard at UNT in spring 2012; and internationally renowned sculptor and printmaker Kiki Smith.