Kathy Acker’s pioneering adventures in the internet’s erogenous zone

The radical writer was quick to see the seductive possibilities of email. Twenty years ago she began a relationship conducted through the ether, with her playful correspondence now published as a book

In 1995, I’d just begun my freelance working life as an illustrator. I switched on the internet twice a day. International clients would still get in touch by landline, or maybe they’d fax. I didn’t use email for personal correspondence. There was no social media. It was several lifetimes ago.

In 1995, Kathy Acker – writer, artist, punk icon, best known for her transgressive, experimental novel Blood and Guts in High School – emailed cultural theorist McKenzie Wark, or rather he emailed her as she flew back to the US from Australia after their brief sexual and intellectual encounter. And she wrote back.

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