KATHY ACKER
Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947-November 30, 1997) was one of the most influential
writers of her generation. Born in Manhattan, she divided her working life
between NY, London, and California. She was the author of numerous novels and
anthologies of her work including the following publications on Grove Press:
Pussy, King of the Pirates, 1997; Empire of the Senseless, 1988; my mother:
demonology, a novel, 1993, Blood and Guts in High School, 1989; Great
Expectations, 1989; Literal Madness: Kathy Goes to Haiti/My Death My Life by
Pier Paolo Pasolini/Florida, 1989. Others include: Bodies of Work: Essays,
Serpent's Tail, 1997; Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels-The Childlike Death of
Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula/I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac/Imaging,
the Adu, Grove/Atlantic, 1998; Hannibal Lecter, My Father, Native Agents Series/Semiotext(e),
1991. Acker was also an opera librettist, a playwright, a performer, a
journalist, and a screenwriter. In the 1980's she worked with Richard Foreman on
a play version of My Life, My Death which was presented at the Theatre de la
Bastille, Paris and on the opera-The Birth of a Poet. Among the many journalism
pieces she wrote during the last year of her life (including interviews with the
Spice Girls and another with William Burroughs), she wrote "The Gift of Disease,"
an article chronicling her experience with breast cancer for the London Guardian
(Jan 1997). One of Acker's final writings, the opera "Requiem," commissioned by
the American Opera Project and performed in 1998, was first presented, in part,
in CTHEORY, a cultural theory Web zine edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker.
Although Acker never directly published any of her works on the Web, as Greg
Lindsay writes in his December 1997 memorial, "her multi-vocal style of writing
and her concern with 'plagiarizing' snippets of other texts only to spit them
back out transformed definitely prefigured" this technology.
Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947-November 30, 1997) was one of the most influential
writers of her generation. Born in Manhattan, she divided her working life
between NY, London, and California. She was the author of numerous novels and
anthologies of her work including the following publications on Grove Press:
Pussy, King of the Pirates, 1997; Empire of the Senseless, 1988; my mother:
demonology, a novel, 1993, Blood and Guts in High School, 1989; Great
Expectations, 1989; Literal Madness: Kathy Goes to Haiti/My Death My Life by
Pier Paolo Pasolini/Florida, 1989. Others include: Bodies of Work: Essays,
Serpent's Tail, 1997; Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels-The Childlike Death of
Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula/I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac/Imaging,
the Adu, Grove/Atlantic, 1998; Hannibal Lecter, My Father, Native Agents Series/Semiotext(e),
1991. Acker was also an opera librettist, a playwright, a performer, a
journalist, and a screenwriter. In the 1980's she worked with Richard Foreman on
a play version of My Life, My Death which was presented at the Theatre de la
Bastille, Paris and on the opera-The Birth of a Poet. Among the many journalism
pieces she wrote during the last year of her life (including interviews with the
Spice Girls and another with William Burroughs), she wrote "The Gift of Disease,"
an article chronicling her experience with breast cancer for the London Guardian
(Jan 1997). One of Acker's final writings, the opera "Requiem," commissioned by
the American Opera Project and performed in 1998, was first presented, in part,
in CTHEORY, a cultural theory Web zine edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker.
Although Acker never directly published any of her works on the Web, as Greg
Lindsay writes in his December 1997 memorial, "her multi-vocal style of writing
and her concern with 'plagiarizing' snippets of other texts only to spit them
back out transformed definitely prefigured" this technology.