Cynthia Carr is an American writer who has contributed to a number of periodicals, including The Village Voice and Artforum . She often publishes under the byline C. Carr. [1]
Carr graduated from the University of Iowa in 1972 with an honors degree in English. She went on to work as a freelance writer for several years, and then as a staff writer for The Village Voice from 1987 [2] to 2003, where she specialized in arts coverage. [3] [4] "On Edge," her column for The Village Voice, chronicled New York's downtown performance scene, including such then-emerging artists as Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh, Marina Abramović, and Ulay. [4] She also wrote about performance art and culture for Artforum , LA Weekly , Interview and Mirabella . [4]
Her 2012 biography of artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz, Fire in the Belly, has been called one of the most important books of the year for its meticulous analysis of Wojnarowicz's prominent role at the intersection of gay history and art history in late 20th century America. [5] The book won a Lambda Literary Award in 2013 in the category of Gay Memoir or Biography. [6]
In 2024, Carr released Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, a biographical portrait of Candy Darling, queer icon and Warhol superstar. [7]
David Michael Wojnarowicz was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorporated personal narratives influenced by his struggle with AIDS as well as his political activism in his art until his death from the disease in 1992.
Warhol superstars were a clique of New York City personalities promoted by the pop artist Andy Warhol during the 1960s and early 1970s. These personalities appeared in Warhol's artworks and accompanied him in his social life, epitomizing his dictum, "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes". Warhol would simply film them, and declare them "superstars".
Jackie Curtis was an American actor, writer, singer, and Warhol superstar.
Peter Hujar was an American photographer best known for his black-and-white portraits. Hujar's work received only marginal public recognition during his lifetime, but he has since been recognized as a major American photographer of the late 20th century.
"Walk on the Wild Side" is a song by American rock musician Lou Reed from his second solo studio album, Transformer (1972). It was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson and released as a double A-side with "Perfect Day". Known as a counterculture anthem, the song received wide radio coverage and became Reed's biggest hit and signature song while touching on topics considered taboo at the time, such as transgender people, drugs, male prostitution, and oral sex.
Candy Darling was an American transgender actress, best known as a Warhol superstar. She starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971), and was a muse of the Velvet Underground.
Women in Revolt is a 1971 American satirical film produced by Andy Warhol and directed by Paul Morrissey. It was initially released as Andy Warhol's Women. The film stars Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, and Holly Woodlawn, three trans women and superstars of Warhol's Factory scene. It also features soundtrack music by John Cale.
Jim Provenzano is an American author, playwright, photographer and currently an editor with the Bay Area Reporter.
Greer Lankton, was an American transgender artist known for creating lifelike sewn dolls that were often modeled on friends or celebrities and posed in elaborate theatrical settings. She was a key figure in the East Village art scene of the 1980s in New York.
Ira Silverberg is an American editor and consultant to writers, artists, publishers, funders, and non-profit arts organizations. He is a member of the adjunct faculty of the Columbia University School of the Arts, MFA Writing Program.
Kevin Killian was an American poet, author, editor, and playwright, primarily of LGBT literature. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for Poetry in 2009.
Marguerite Van Cook is an English artist, writer, musician/singer and filmmaker. She was born in Portsmouth, England and now resides in New York City on the Lower East Side, in the East Village. She attended Portsmouth College of Art and Design, Northumbria University Graphic and Fine Arts programs, BMCC, and Columbia University for English (BA) and Modern European Studies (MA). She holds a PH.D in French on eighteenth century political economics in the work of women writers from CUNY Graduate Center. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and currently at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York.
Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer, and for several prose works of fiction and non-fiction. In 2016 she began writing for both Marvel and DC Comics. She has twice been named a runner-up for the Michael L. Printz Award.
Jeanne Córdova was an American writer and supporter of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. A former Catholic nun, Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and self-described butch.
Larry Mitchell was an American author and publisher. He was the founder of Calamus Books - an early small press devoted to gay male literature - and the author of fiction dealing with the gay male experience in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s.
Tessa Hughes-Freeland is a British-born experimental film maker, writer living in New York City. Her films have screened internationally in North America, Europe and Australia and in prominent museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; and the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. She has collaborated on live multi-media projects with musicians like John Zorn and J. G. Thirlwell. She and Ela Troyano co-founded the New York Film Festival Downtown in 1984 and served as its co-directors until 1990. Hughes-Freeland later served as President of the Board of Directors of the Film-Makers Co-Operative in New York City from 1998-2001. She has published articles in numerous books, including “Naked Lens: Beat Cinema” and “No Focus: Punk Film,” and in periodicals including PAPER Magazine, Filmmaker magazine, GQ, the East Village Eye, and Film Threat.
The 55th Street Playhouse—periodically referred to as the 55th Street Cinema and Europa Theatre—was a 253-seat movie house at 154 West 55th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, that opened on May 20, 1927. Many classic art and foreign-language films, including those by Jean Cocteau, Sergei Eisenstein, Federico Fellini, Abel Gance, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg and Orson Welles, were featured at the theater. Later, Andy Warhol presented many of his notable films in this building in the late 1960s. Other notable films were also shown at the theater, including Boys in the Sand (1971) and Him (1974).
Civilian Warfare Gallery was an art gallery located in New York City's East Village in the early 1980s and was one of the founding galleries of the East Village art movement. Founded by artists Alan Barrows and Dean Savard, the gallery helped launch the careers of notable artists including David Wojnarowicz, Richard Hambleton, Luis Frangella, Greer Lankton, the Grey Organisation/Toby Mott and Jane Bauman among others.
Hal Bromm is an American art dealer, designer, architect, curator and preservationist. He is the owner of Hal Bromm Art & Design and Hal Bromm Gallery in New York City.
A Fire in My Belly is an unfinished American avant-garde film directed by David Wojnarowicz.