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 contents 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. You can find the catalogue of the Kathy Acker Reading Room here. (Please note that as of yet, not all titles have been catalogued, but we are working on adding them to the list.)
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.
Visit the Kathy Acker Reading Room
The Kathy Acker Reading Room is open to visitors with research interests. Please direct your questions and requests (including scheduling study visits) to the American Studies department.
The Kathy Acker Listening Room
Listen to Kathy Acker's Personal Record Collection
We have compiled Kathy Acker's records and created a playlist so that you can fully immerse yourself in Kathy Acker's life and work, both while you are visiting the KARR as well as in your everyday life.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2fexs5d8c5n5eTHzIFEjg2?si=2yCOozDbSASdxB4LQhfI_A&pi=8-7RAlikTR60U
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/de/playlist/the-kathy-acker-listening-room/pl.u-oZylqGgCRNrWlz5?l=en
YouTube: to be added
Many thanks to Yasmin Ghaemmaghami.
Kathy Acker
Born 18 April 1947 in New York City, died 1 December 1997 in Tijuana, Kathy Acker 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.
Find a more comprehensive biography of Kathy Acker here.