Kathy Acker at Buffalo, 1995

Kathy Acker at Buffalo in 1995 — an interview:

1. on publishing her early works (7:23): MP3
2. on fitting in and punk culture (2:43): MP3
3. on working through problems of identity, language and appropriation (7:10): MP3
4. on different feminisms (5:20): MP3
5. on the Situationists (0:59): MP3
6. on Pussy, King of the Pirates (2:23): MP3
7. reading from "Ostracism's Story," Pussy, King of the Pirates (0:51): MP3
8. on the Hammer Horror influence (1:27): MP3
9. on trying to access already-there languages (5:48): MP3
10. reading from "I Meet Myself," Pussy, King of the Pirates (5:42): MP3
11. on accessing sexual language (1:20): MP3
12. on shocking readers and reappropriating language (6:05): MP3
13. on locating pleasure in writing (6:55): MP3
14. on Empire of the Senseless (4:00): MP3
15. on popular culture and appropriation (3:50): MP3
16. on post-capitalist society (8:01): MP3

Listen to an audio recording of the complete discussion (1:10:13): MP3 .

Born and raised in New York City, novelist, poet and performance artist Kathy Acker came to be closely associated with the punk movement of the 1970s and '80s that affected much of the culture in and around Manhattan.  She received her bachelor's degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1968; there she worked with David Antin and Jerome Rothenberg. Acker's body of work borrows heavily from the experimental styles of William S. Burroughs and Marguerite Duras. She often used extreme forms of pastiche and even Burroughs's cut-up technique.