Kathy Acker

Kathy Acker (born April 18, 1947 in Manhattan and died November 30, 1997 in Tijuana, Mexico) is an American sex-positive feminist writer. After supporting herself as a stripper, Acker's first work appeared in print as part of the burgeoning New York literary underground of the mid-1970s. She remained on the margins of the literary establishment, only being published by small presses until the mid-1980s, thus earning herself the epithet of literary terrorist. 1984 saw her first British publication, a novel called Blood and Guts in High School. From here on Kathy produced a considerable body of novels, almost all still in print with Grove Press. She wrote pieces for a number of magazines and anthologies, and also had notable pieces printed in issues of ReSearch and Rapid Eye. Towards the end of her life she had a measure of success in the conventional press--the Guardian newspaper published several of her articles, including an interview with the Spice Girls, which she submitted just a few months before her death.

Works

• Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (1978)
• Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula By the Black Tarantula (1978)
• I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac (1980)
• N.Y.C. in 1979 (1981)
• Great Expectations (1983)
• Algeria : A Series of Invocations Because Nothing Else Works (1984)
• Blood and Guts in High School (1984)
• Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986)
• Literal Madness: Three Novels (Reprinted 1987)
• Kathy Goes to Haiti
• My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini
• Florida
• Wordplays 5 : An Anthology of New American Drama (1987)
• In Memoriam to Identity (1990)
• Empire of the Senseless (1990)
• Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991)
• My Mother: A Demonology (1994)
• Pussycat Fever (1995)
• Dust. Essays (1995)
• Pussy, King of the Pirates (1996)
• Bodies of Work : Essays (1997)
• Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (Reprinted 1998)
• "Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective" (2002)