David Wojnarowicz Books

This special edition celebrates two decades of the book’s impact, featuring updated content and reflections on its significance over the years. It includes new essays and insights from the author, as well as contributions from notable figures in the field. Readers can expect a deeper exploration of the themes and ideas that have resonated with audiences, along with a fresh perspective on its relevance in today’s context. This edition serves as both a tribute and a renewed invitation to engage with the work.

Dear Jean Pierre collects David Wojnarowicz’s correspondence with his Parisian lover Jean Pierre Delage from 1979 to 1982, capturing a pivotal moment in Wojnarowicz’s artistic journey. These letters reveal his captivating personality, marked by tenderness, compassion, and neuroses, while also showcasing the evolution of the visual language that defined him as a leading artist of his generation. Readers are introduced to Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud series, the band 3 Teens Kill 4, the release of his first photographs, and his early friendship with Peter Hujar, alongside his involvement in the burgeoning East Village art and music scenes. The collection includes postcards, drawings, xeroxes, photographs, collages, flyers, and contact sheets, highlighting iconic works like the Burning House motif and Untitled (Genet, after Brassai). Beyond these artistic milestones, the letters portray Wojnarowicz as a young man navigating life and love with earnestness, capturing the essence of youth and longing. While both men exchanged letters, Delage’s correspondences are largely lost, leaving a revealing glimpse into Wojnarowicz’s internal world during these formative years.

In Close to the Knives, David Wojnarowicz gives us an important and timely document: a collection of creative essays - a scathing, sexy, sublimely humorous and honest personal testimony to the "Fear of Diversity in America." From the author's violent childhood in suburbia to eventual homelessness on the streets and piers of New York City, to recognition as one of the most provocative artists of his generation -- Close to the Knives is his powerful and iconoclastic memoir. Street life, drugs, art and nature, family, AIDS, politics, friendship and acceptance: Wojnarowicz challenges us to examine our lives -- politically, socially, emotionally, and aesthetically.

The powerful, personal and iconoclastic memoir of David Wojnarowicz, AIDS activist, author and one of the most provocative artists of his generation. With a new introduction by Olivia Laing.

From the author of Close to the Knives, a series of fictional monologues that create a visceral and carnivalesque mosaic of life at the fringes of late-80s America. The Waterfront Journals is a collection of monologues, each ventriloquising one of the many people whom Wojnarowicz met on his travels throughout America while he was sleeping rough. We meet these down and outs in unassuming locations - in truck stops, bus stations and parks - and taken together their voices form a poignant chorus that distils the desires, dreams and dangers of those people whose lives confined are to the margins.

Audio journals that document Wojnarowicz's turbulent attempts to understand his anxieties and passions, and tracking his thoughts as they develop in real time.