Georgina Colby

An in-depth analysis of the work of one of the twentieth centurys most innovative writersKathy Ackers body of work is one of the most significant collections of experimental writing in English. In Kathy Acker: Writing the Impossible, Georgina Colby explores Ackers compositional processes and intricate experimental practices, from early poetic exercises written in the 1970s to her final writings in 1997. Through original archival research, Colby traces the stages in Ackers writing and draws on her knowledge of unpublished manuscripts, notebooks, essays, illustrations, and correspondence to produce new ways of reading Ackers works. Rather than treating Acker as a postmodern writer this book argues that Acker continued a radical modernist engagement with the crisis of language, and carried out a series of experiments in composition and writing that are comparable in scope and rigor to her modernist predecessors Stein and Joyce. Each chapter focuses on a particular compositional method and insists on the importance of avant-garde experiment to the process of making new non-conventional modes of meaning. Combining close attention to the form of Ackers experimental writings with a consideration of the literary cultures from which she emerged, Colby positions Acker as a key figure in the American avant-garde, and a pioneer of contemporary experimental womens writing.Key FeaturesExamines unpublished manuscripts, notebooks, lecture notes, letters and manuscripts from the Kathy Acker PapersFeatures eleven previously unpublished images of original manuscripts, correspondence, and colour illustrations from the Kathy Acker PapersUtilises major archival study of Ackers experimental compositional practicesSituates Acker as a late modernist writer and a key figure in the American Avant-Garde

Writing the Impossible

Kathy Acker

Leigh Wilson

Kaja Marczewska

The Contemporary Small Press: Making Publishing Visible addresses the contemporary literary small press in the US and UK from the perspective of a range of disciplines. Covering numerous aspects of small press publishing—poetry and fiction, children’s publishing, the importance of ethical commitments, the relation to the mainstream, the attitudes of those working for presses, the role of the state in supporting presses—scholars from literary criticism, the sociology of literature and publishing studies demonstrate how a variety of approaches and methods are needed to fully understand the contemporary small press and its significance for literary studies and for broader literary culture.

Georgina Colby

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