Tense is a never-realised publication, written and composed by Lucy Lippard and Jerry Kearns in 1984, that has only now has been released in a very limited run. The book accompanies their exhibition ‘Top Stories’, which takes a closer look at the 29 issues of the prose periodical with the same title, founded in the late 1970s by Anne Turyn. It was dedicated to fiction by emerging women artists and writers at the time. ‘Tense’ was originally intended to become part of the series as well. It was only recently – during the making of the exhibition at Amsterdam’s Kunstverein – that the original mock-up was retrieved from the editor’s archives and finally sent off to the printer.