(from Wikipedia) Ron Kolm (born 1947) is an United StatesAmerican poet, editor, activist and bookseller, based in New York City. Kolm came to New York in 1970 and got a job at the Strand bookstore, where he worked with Tom Verlaine and Patti Smith. By 1980 Kolm established his own small press; Low-Tech Press. Before calling it quits a decade later, he had assembled a backlist of ten books (The Low-Tech Manual, Five Plus Five, Girlie Pictures and several Mike Topp titles). During this period he became friends and colleagues with a group of writers who would come to exemplify the "Downtown" scene of the 1970s and 80s ("Downtown" in this context means anything below Fourteenth Street in Manhattan). In 1985, Kolm, Bart Plantenga, Mike Golden, and Peter Lamborn Wilson founded the Unbearables, a loose collective of poets and artists based on the precepts of Hakim Bey, as set forth in his seminal book, TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone). They took their name from a short story by Mike Golden. Their first reading series was at the Life Cafe in the East Village. They later read or performed their work at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, Gathering of Tribes and the Bowery Poetry Club. Their usual targets are literary cliches, which they attempt to deconstruct with humor. Kolm has been one of the editors of their anthologies: Unbearables (1995), Crimes of the Beats (1998), Help Yourself! (2002) The Worst Book I Ever Read (2009) and The Unbearables Big Book of Sex (2011) all published by Autonomedia. Kolm's own publications include The Plastic Factory (1989, Red Dust), Welcome to the Barbecue (Low-Tech Press, 1990) and Rank Cologne (P.O.N. Press, 1991). His work can also be found, along with the other Unbearables, in the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder's Mouth Press, 1999), and in Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Literary Scene, 1974-1992 (New York University Press, 2006). He has collaborated on a novel, Neo Phobe, written with Jim Feast (Unbearable Books, 2006). The Ron Kolm papers (some 35 cartons of correspondence, notebooks, objects, chapbooks, signed first editions and runs of literary magazines) were purchased by the Fales Library at New York University, where they now reside.
My favorite authors are Thomas Bernhard, Roberto Bolano, Javier Marias, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Djuna Barnes, James joyce, Rabelais, Gustave Flaubert, Jonathan Swift, Petronius, Carl Watson, Susan Scutti, etc.
Welcome to Fictionaut, Ron!
Welcome to Fictionaut, Ron!