Carr will be Reading from Her Book; Reception and Book Signing to Follow

Book Launch: “Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz” by Cynthia Carr, July 24th at NYU’s Fales Library
Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz

Carr will be Reading from Her Book; Reception and Book Signing to Follow

 

New York University’s Fales Library & Special Collections will host the book launch of Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz by Cynthia Carr on Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 6:30pm at the Fales Library, third floor, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, (at LaGuardia Place). [Subways A,C,E, B,D,M to West 4th Street; 6 line to Astor Place; R train to 8th Street.].  Books will be on sale at the event during the reception and book signing.

  • WHO:  Author Cynthia Carr
  • WHAT:  Book Launch--Fire in the Belly:  The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
  • WHERE:  Fales Library Reading Room, 3rd Floor Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, NYC
  • WHEN:  Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 6:30pm


The public should RSVP to rsvp@library.nyu.edu with your name and title/date of the event.

In December 2010, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington made headlines when it responded to protests from the Catholic League by voluntarily censoring an excerpt of David Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly from its show on American portraiture.  Why a work of art could stir such emotions is at the heart of Cynthia Carr's Fire in the Belly, the first biography of a beleaguered art-world figure who became one of the most important voices of his generation.

David Wojnarowicz was a painter, writer, photographer, filmmaker, performer, and activist. He made super-8 films, created the photographic series "Arthur Rimbaud in New York", performed in the band Three Teens Kill 4 - No Motive, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries. In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called "Graffiti Show". He died of AIDS on July 22, 1992. The David Wojnarowicz Papers at Fales includes journals, correspondence, manuscripts, photography, film, video and audio works, source and production materials, objects, and ephemera.


About the Author

Cynthia Carr was a columnist and arts reporter for the Village Voice from 1984 to 2003. Writing under the byline C. Carr, she specialized in experimental and cutting-edge art, especially performance art. Some of these pieces are now collected in On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. She is also the author of Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Artforum, Bookforum, Modern Painters, the Drama Review, and other publications. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. Carr lives in New York.

About Fales Library and Special Collections:
The Fales Library, comprising nearly 255,000 volumes, and over 12,000 linear feet of archive and manuscript materials, houses the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections of the NYU Libraries. The Fales Collection was given to NYU in 1957 by DeCoursey Fales in memory of his father, Haliburton Fales. It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. The Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including extensive film and video objects. The Food and Cookery Collection is a vast, and rapidly expanding collection of books and manuscripts documenting food and foodways with particular emphasis on New York City. Other strengths of the collection include the Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll Materials, the Robert Frost Library, the Kaplan and Rosenthal Collections of Judaica and Hebraica and the manuscript collections of Elizabeth Robins and Erich Maria Remarque. The Fales Library preserves manuscripts and original editions of books that are rare or important not only because of their texts, but also because of their value as artifacts.

Press Contact

Christopher James
Christopher James
(212) 998-6876