1st 2010 536pp Randy Press 4to paperback. Illustrated. NM.
 
Although best known for appearing in John Waters's early films, Cookie Mueller made a more substantial mark as a writer and performer in New York from the late 1970s to her tragic death from AIDS in 1989. With her zany stories, essays, plays, club performances, underground-film roles, fashion designs, and health and art columns in the East Village Eye, Details, and High Times, Cookie became a downtown icon, mixing with luminaries such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gregory Corso, Divine, David Wojnarowicz etc. In addition to exploring aspects of Cookie's life and providing a publishing history of her work, this encyclopedia serves as an overview of the '80s lower Manhattan art scene, examining Cookie's take on every artist whose work she sought out for her monthly "Art and About" column (1982-1989).