Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz is a project of the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. I am also deeply grateful for the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
I was helped enormously by a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, and by a stay at the artists’ community, Yaddo.
Fales Library at New York University became my home away from home during the research phase. I benefited from director Marvin J. Taylor’s unstinting support for this project. He and archivists Lisa Darms and Brent Phillips went out of their way to help.
For their help in Paris, I am grateful to Marcelle Clements, Laurence Viallet, and the Centre International d’Accueil et d’échanges des Récollets.
Art historian Jonathan Weinberg shared research he gathered while working on a book about the Hudson River piers and while curating the exhibition “The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront.”
Bill Dobbs provided documentation on “Art What Thou Eat” that I could not have found otherwise.
I was fortunate to have Donna Mandel and Ann Snitow as first readers of each chapter and can’t thank them enough for their close reading, their feedback, and their encouragement.
My editor, Kathy Belden, was a champion of this project early on, and I benefited enormously from her enthusiasm, her patience, and her skill in shaping the narrative.
I also owe special thanks to acquiring editor Karen Rinaldi, who recognized immediately what this project could be.
Photographer Karen Cattan played an invaluable role in organizing and preparing the visual elements in this book.
Special thanks to Vince Aletti, Tommy Turner, and Jean Foos (on behalf of the estate of Keith Davis) for sharing relevant portions of personal journals.
I am also deeply grateful for the sundry crucial ways in which I have been helped and supported during this process by Shelagh Doyle, Tierney Drummond, Karen Durbin, Su Friedrich, Dave King, Amy Scholder, Amy Sillman, Karen Vierneisel, and Marianne Weems.