Acker, Kathy (1944–1997)

US postmodern, feminist author. One of the new wave of avant-garde writers influenced by cult figures such as William Burroughs and Georges Bataille, Acker's eclectic style attracted notoriety when she published Blood and Guts in High School in 1978. In this novel, her juxtaposition of elements of autobiography, plagiarism, and pornography challenged the reader's concept of fiction and pushed back the boundaries of writing.

At the age of 18 she began to work in the sex industry as a stripper and show girl. Meanwhile she wrote journalistic pieces on the porn industry, inspired by the work of Burroughs. Her first two novels reflect his influence on her work: I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining (1974) and The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula (1975). However, with these books Acker also established her own style, characterized by a refusal to develop plot, and provocative description of the sexual, the brutal, and the ugly.

The US feminist movement embraced Acker as a voice of the new counterculture, but in the mid-1980s her love–hate relationship with her home country led her to move to England. Acker also turned to performance art; her spiky punk hair, leather clothing, body piercings, and tattoos added to her notoriety, and she soon became a well-known figure. In 1990 Acker set up a department of writing at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Acker's later works include Don Quixote (1986), Empire of the Senseless (1988), and In Memoriam to Identity (1990).