Participants
Megan Kelso
Megan Kelso is a professional cartoonist residing in Seattle. While attending the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, she was inspired by the ‘zines, bands and DIY art projects in the late 80s. Between 1993 and 1998 she self-published six issues of the influential Riot Grrrl minicomic Girlhero. In 2007, her comic “Watergate Sue” ran weekly for six months in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Fantagraphics Books has published Girlhero collection Queen of the Black Black, short story collection The Squirrel Mother, and her award-winning graphic novel, Artichoke Tales. Megan is currently at work on a third collection of short stories and serves on the board of the Short Run Comix & Arts Festival.
Paul de Barros
Paul de Barros is the former pop music coordinator and current music journalist for the Seattle Times, where he has extensively covered everything from the history of Seattle’s jazz scene to the emerging grunge genre. He has authored and co-authored multiple books, including Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle and Shall We Play That One Together?: The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland. He was an associate of Acker and read with her at Contexts Bookstore in Seattle in 1980.
Anne Focke
Anne Focke has been an arts professional since beginning her career at the Seattle Art Museum in 1967. In 1974 she founded the influential alternative arts organization and/or gallery. She has continued to advocate for adventurous arts and culture in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. She is a self-described “writer, organizer, and advisor who has had a full work life without ever having a job that someone had before me.” In honor of her contributions, the City of Seattle has named its civic arts venue the Anne Focke Gallery.
Alice Wheeler
Alice Wheeler is a photographer and early devotee of punk rock music and culture. She graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and worked as a photojournalist for many publications, including Newsweek, Time, Life, Rolling Stone, Spin, and No Depression, which was recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists in 1999 for outstanding work. Her photographs have been exhibited at Seattle Art Museum, MoPOP, and Henry Art Gallery, among others. Her work is the subject of the book Outcasts and Innocents: Photographs of the Northwest with an introduction by Kathleen Hanna. She is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery.
Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna is an artist best known for her groundbreaking performances as a member of the punk band Bikini Kill and her multimedia group, Le Tigre. Her career as a musician was inspired by opening for Kathy Acker in Seattle in May 1989. She is a founding member and driving force of the feminist Riot Grrrl movement based out of Olympia, Washington. The Punk Singer, a documentary about her life, premiered at festivals and saw a nationwide theatrical release. She is currently giving lectures and performing with her new band, The Julie Ruin, as well as the recently reformed Bikini Kill.
Marilyn Stablein
Marilyn Stablein is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer and mixed media artist whose sculptural artist’s books, altered books and performance art concern visual narrative, travelog and memoir. Her books include Vermin: A Traveler's Bestiary, Houseboat on the Ganges & A Room in Kathmandu, and more. Her collages, assemblages and artist books are in private and public collections including Yale University Beinecke Library, Brown University Library, The British Library, and University of Washington Suzallo & Allen Libraries Special Collections. She was an associate of Acker and read with her at Contexts Bookstore in Seattle in 1980.
Stacey Levine
Stacey Levine is a Seattle-based novelist, short story author, and journalist. Her books include the Girl with Brown Fur, Frances Johnson, My Horse and Other Stories, and Dra–. She has won a PEN/West Fiction Award, and her work has been longlisted for The Story Prize as well as shortlisted for the Washington State Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her fiction has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Fence, Tin House, The Iowa Review, and other publications. She participated in the Kathy Acker workshop in 1989 and as a result later opened for Karen Finley at CoCA. Her newest novel, Where is Mice?, will be published in 2020.
Steven Shaviro
Steven Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. His books include Connected, or What it Means to Live in the Network Society, Post-Cinematic Affect, The Universe of Things, and Discognition. His collection, Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction about Postmodernism, includes a chapter on his association with Kathy Acker, a result of her 1989 CoCA residency.
Gary Wilkie
Gary Wilkie is a curator and bookseller currently based in Portland, Oregon. He was a colleague and early advocate of the work of Kathy Acker. Wilkie was the proprietor of Contexts Bookstore in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, and quickly became a fixture in Seattle’s literary community. In August 1980, he hosted a reading with Acker, Paul de Barros, and Marilyn Stablein.
Cathy Hillenbrand
Cathy Hillenbrand has been an influential advocate for contemporary art in Seattle for more than four decades. She was co-owner of the Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill before launching Real Comet Press, publishing the work of artists such as Lynda Barry, Michael Dougan, Lucy Lippard, and Art Chantry, as well as feminist critiques. An avid art collector, Hillenbrand served on the Seattle Arts Commission as the chair of the Public Art Advisory Committee. She continues her community engagement as a board member of Capitol Hill Housing.
Jim Jones
Jim Jones studied English Literature at the University of Kansas before moving to Seattle in 1990. Jim’s punk fanzine “Capitol Punishment” was voted one of the World’s Best Fanzines by the British music press in the early 80s. In Seattle, he co-founded Zero Hour Publishing (1987-1995) with fellow ex-Nebraskan Alice Wheeler, which chronicled the emerging grunge scene and released the NW fiction anthology Good to Go and I Am Secretly an Important Man, a posthumous collection of the writings of Seattle poet Steven Jesse Bernstein.
Annie Grosshans
Annie Grosshans is a writer with a background in visual art. After graduating from the University of Washington with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, "Contemporary Aesthetics and the Creative Process," Grosshans became director of documentary publications at and/or gallery, Seattle's alternative art venue of the era. She wrote criticism for local and coastal publications and wrote and produced text-based performance art works. In Seattle's Belltown, she co-founded Art In Form, a bookstore of artists' books, catalogues, and critical thought, and participated in seminars focused on feminist film theory. After scripting and shooting a number of video poems and art documentaries, she worked in the NW commercial film production industry. Annie Grosshans’ most recent project is a weblication, TheWorldIsNotDoneYet, a digital born work of creative expression, written in and for the cyber medium.
Art Exhibitions
In addition to the above, exhibitions focusing on Kathy Acker’s Seattle residencies in 1980 and 1989 include photographs by Alice Wheeler, Cam Garrett, Randy Eriksen, Louie Raffloer, and Charles Peterson, as well as artwork by Marilyn Stablein, Ashleigh Talbot, Jim Jones, and others.
