Flavorwire

Kathy Acker

Abandoned by her father before she was born, Acker grew up at odds with her domineering mother in an upper-middle class Upper East Side home, dreaming of becoming a pirate. That could be a novel right there, if truth be told, but Acker’s life only got more interesting — in the ’70s she worked as a stripper while gaining repute in underground literary circles and eventually became a punk icon and an incredibly important and powerful force in feminist and transgressive fiction. In 1996 Acker was diagnosed with breast cancer, and died a year and a half later in room 101 of a cancer clinic in Mexico. As her friend Alan Moore said, ”There’s nothing that woman can’t turn into a literary reference.”