In Print December 2020

Kathy Acker
in Seattle

Edited by Daniel Schulz

Kathy Acker in Seattle ed. by Daniel Schulz - book
Kather Acker in Seattle book ed. by Daniel Schulz
The Book

Kathy Acker in Seattle

The late Kathy Acker’s residencies in Seattle in 1980 and 1989 were brief but important to the development of this influential literary artist. While residing in Seattle’s Belltown arts community in 1980, she was completing work on her signature novel, Blood and Guts in High School, and beginning to write Great Expectations, which includes passages about her experiences there. She returned in 1989 for a residency sponsored by Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA), which inspired Kathleen Hanna to form Bikini Kill and gave momentum to the Riot Grrrl feminist movement.

In September 2019, the Kathy Acker in Seattle Symposium presented a series of exhibitions, panels, readings, and research opportunities. The symposium featured regional, national, and international artists, authors, curators, and scholars examining Acker’s lasting legacy in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. This book documents those proceedings. Through oral histories, dissertations, and contemporaneous documentation, Kathy Acker in Seattle provides valuable insight into this fascinating artist.


The Symposium

Images from the Kathy Acker in Seattle Symposium, September 2019. Kathleen Hanna (The Julie Ruin, Le Tigre, Bikini Kill) delivers livestream keynote at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery; panel reads from select Kathy Acker works at Goethe Institute, Seattle.

Daniel Schulz, Ed.

Daniel Schulz, Ed.

Daniel Schulz is a German-American writer, researcher, and factory worker based in Cologne. In 2015 he staged and directed the play Humanity Incorporated at the15minutefestival in Cologne and at the 100°festival in Berlin. He is the author of a shortstory collection Schrei (2016) and undertook the inventory of the Kathy Acker Reading Room at the University of Cologne in 2017, which he has since curated. He was a research assistant for the Get Rid of Meaning exhibition at the Badischer Kunstverein

Karlsruhe in 2018 and a co-editor for Gender Forum’s special edition “Kathy Acker: Portrait of an Eye/I” in 2019. In 2020 he completed his Master in History and English Studies, delivering the thesis Inventarization and Creation of a Finding Aid: Kathy Acker 1947-1997. His work and works have been published in Der Federkiel, Luftruinen, Die Novelle, The Transnational, Paris Review, The Electronic Book Review, Mirage 5, Gender Forum, Fragmented Voices and the German anthology Tin Soldier (2020).