Celebrities fascinate, inspire, and repel us. Mary Gaitskill, Rick Moody, and Jill Nelson read from and discuss a daring new book of private views on public figures: Aretha Franklin, Linda Lovelace, Harriet Tubman, M.F.K. Fisher and more come to life in these intimate portraits by contemporary writers. In conversation with editor Amy Scholder.

The first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished.Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stoppe...

Selections from the work of radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin, famous for her antipornography stance and role in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s.Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin was a caricature of misandrist extremism in the popular imagination and a polarizing figure within the women's movement, infamous for her antipornography stance and her role in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s. She still looms large in feminist demands for sexual freedom, ev...

"In this collection commissioned by Amy Scholder, nine original essays explore the specific and personal impact of cultural icons." — Publishers WeeklyWhose poster hung on your wall as a teenager? Whose record did you wear out? Whose life story could you not resist? Fascination works in mysterious ways—it can be born out of inspiration, or repulsion, or both. In these daring essays, some of the most provocative writers of our time offer a private view on a...

Kathy Acker was a punk-rock counter-cultural icon, and innovator of the literary underground. The interviews collected here span her amazing, uncompromising, and often misunderstood 30-year career.From Acker's earliest interviews--filled with playful, evasive, and counter-intuitive responses--to the last interview before her death where she reflects on the state of American literature, these interviews capture the writer at her funny and surprising best. Another hi...

From life in the streets and love in the alleys to fame in the spotlight and an untimely death—raw, biting, and brilliant selections from the personal journals of one of the most uniquely creative artists of the late twentieth centuryWhen his life ended at age thirty-seven—a casualty of the AIDS epidemic that took so many before their time—David Wojnarowicz had long since established himself as one of America's most vital artists and activists. In the Shadow of ...

Voices from the margins of American life tell tales of trickery, betrayal, sex, and defeat in these short monologues by "a spokesman for the unspeakable" ( New York magazine).In his full but regrettably brief lifetime, David Wojnarowicz was many things: a visual and performance artist whose radical work incensed the right-wing establishment, a tireless AIDS and anticensorship activist, and, most emphatically, a writer. His Waterfront ...

Kathy Acker was one of the most original, subversive and influential writers of the late 20th century. Known variously, and notoriously, as a consummate postmodernist, feminist, post-punk and plagiarist, her oeuvreover a dozen novels and novellashas inspired a generation of writers and artists.Lust for Life is the definitive collection of essays on Acker's inimitable work, including Peter Wollen's elegiac primer, widely considered the best introduction to Acker, and Avital ...

We have been bombarded by images of the U.S. Secretary of State as the Great Diplomat, walking onto the tarmac of a foreign country as if she were a rock star, an intellectual giant, and the embodiment of the American dream all rolled into one. Meanwhile, she has spoken out against affirmative action, lied to the 9/11 Commission, defended a disastrous war in Iraq, and been the mouthpiece for an administration at its most shameful moments.Who is she, and why does she hold such a spec...