Novelist, poet, and editor-in-chief of Frieze Andrew Durbin will be joined by Chris Kraus on the ALOUD stage to discuss his forthcoming dual biography about photographer Peter Hujar and his sometimes partner, the sculptor and painter Paul Thek, and their intertwined lives.
Meticulously researched, the book tenderly follows the development of the intense friendship–and romance–between these two seminal American artists who defined the New York creative scene from the 1960s through the late 1980s, and features the large circle of friends they shared, from Andy Warhol and Fran Lebowitz, to Susan Sontag and David Wojnarowicz.
“As official narratives everywhere strain and crack, Peter and Paul—and Durbin—offer a desperately needed alternative way of seeing and being.” —Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Susan Sontag: Her Life and Work
Featured Speakers and Moderator:
Andrew Durbin
Andrew Durbin is the editor in chief of frieze magazine. He is the author of the novels MacArthur Park, which was a finalist for the Believer Book Award, and Skyland, and served as the editor for Kevin Killian’s posthumous work Fascination. His writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Paris Review online, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He lives in London.
Chris Kraus
Chris Kraus is a writer and critic. She studied acting and spent almost two decades making performances and experimental films in New York before moving to Los Angeles where she began writing. Her novels include Aliens & Anorexia, I Love Dick, Torpor, Summer of Hate, and most recently The Four Spent the Day Together. She has published three books of cultural criticism—Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, Where Art Belongs, and Social Practices. I Love Dick was adapted for television and her literary biography After Kathy Acker was published by Semiotext(e) and Penguin Press. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Kraus held the Mary Routt Chair of Writing at Scripps College in 2019 and was Writer-in-Residence at ArtCenter College between 2020–2024. She has written for various magazines and has been a coeditor of the independent press Semiotext(e) since 1990. Her work has been praised for its damning intelligence, vulnerability, and dazzling speed and has been translated into seventeen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
