Join Fillip and Los Angeles–based writer Chris Kraus on Saturday, January 20, at 6 pm at the Western Front, Vancouver, for a lecture on the life and work of avant-garde writer Kathy Acker. Presented in collaboration with the Western Front’s ongoing Scrivener’s Monthly series and a Fillip Reading Group with Kraus on January 21, this talk will highlight work from Kraus’s new book After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography, which uses exhaustive archival research and ongoing conversations with mutual colleagues and friends to trace the contradictions and depth of Acker’s life and work.

Entrance is free. Doors will open at 5:30 pm. Copies of After Kathy Acker will be for sale at the event through the Or Gallery Bookstore. Additional support provided by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

Chris Kraus is the author of the bestselling novel I Love Dick, “the most important book written about men and women in the last century” (Guardian), as well as Aliens and Anorexia (Semiotext(e), 2000), Torpor (Semiotext(e), 2006), Summer of Hate (Semiotext(e), 2012), and two books of cultural criticism. She was a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and teaches writing at the European Graduate School, Switzerland. Kraus is a co-editor, with Hedi El Kholti and Sylvere Lotringer, of Semiotext(e) and lives in Los Angeles.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the recent release of Hotel Theory Reader, the fourth title in Fillip’s ongoing Folio Series presenting writing by critics, artists, and curators that engages specific and recurring questions on international contemporary art. This anthology explores the possibilities of theory as an art form, bringing together ideas initially explored in an exhibition organized in 2015 at REDCAT | CalArts’ Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts. The book assembles a collection of texts by David Antin, Art & Language, Ruth Estévez, Bruce Hainley, Wayne Koestenbaum, Chris Kraus, Snejanka Mihaylova, Sohrab Mohebbi, Cally Spooner, V-Girls, Danna Vajda, and Tirdad Zolghadr.