The Kathy Acker Reading Room
Welcome to the personal library of Kathy Acker!
Acker was a U.S.-American writer, artists and countercultural icon. Her pastiche art work copied and transformed the writing of others. The Kathy Acker Reading Room houses 6054 books, magazines, and pamphlets as well as a collection of letters, postcards and personal items. Acker's annotations, underlinings and handwritten notes offer intimite insight into her personal thought and creative process.
The contens of the library reach from George Bataille and Jean Genet, to the experimental outputs of William Burroughs and arthistorically (and culturally) relevant publications by Fluxus. The Reading Room also contains an extensive number of feminist writings, specific favorites of Acker being Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.
If you are interested in studying Kathy Acker, you'll never be able to get as close to her as you can do here!
The contents of the Kathy Acker Reading Room were gifted to the University of Cologne's English Department by Matias Viegener in 2015.
April 28, 4 p.m & May 7, 2 p.m. 2025
Kathy Acker Reading Room - Tour
You can find more information on the Kathy Acker Reading Room here.
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Kathy Acker
Born 18. April 1947 in New York City
Died: December 1st 1997 in Tijuana,
was an experimental writer and counter-cultural icon.
As a writer she took literary experimentation to its extreme trying to find languages of the body, which would give women their own voice within society. Best example of this is her last work Pussy, King of the Pirates, which she also produced a musical version of with the first generation Punk band The Mekons. Her works can be considered queer feminist, science fiction, cyberpunk, etc. and intersectional, political works of art.