Person

Kostelanetz, Richard, 1940-

1940-

Richard Cory Kostelanetz was born on May 14, 1940, in New York City, New York.

He is an American artist, author, editor, and literary critic. He graduated from Brown University (B.A., 1962) and Columbia University (M.A., 1966). He also studied at King's College London as a Fulbright Scholar from 1964 to 1965. Kostelanetz started his career by publishing essays in Partisan Review and The Hudson Review, then profiles of older artists, musicians and writers in The New York Times Magazine. These profiles were collected and published as “Master Minds" (1969). Among his other works are "Visual Language" (1970), "In the Beginning" (1971), "Short Fictions" (1974), "The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America" (1974), and "SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony" (2003). He also edited the anthologies, e.g., “On Contemporary Literature” (1964, 1969), “Beyond Left & Right” (1968), “John Cage” (1970, 1991), “Moholy-Nagy” (1970), “Breakthrough Fictioneers” (1973), “Scenarios” (1980), and “The Literature of SoHo” (1981). Kostelanetz produced literature in audio, video, holography, prints, book-art, and computer-based installations. He is the recipient of many grants from various organizations, e.g., the Guggenheim Foundation (1967), Pulitzer Foundation (1965), the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm (1981–1983), Vogelstein Foundation (1980), Fund for Investigative Journalism (1981), and the National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1978, 1979, 1981-1983, 1985, 1986, 1990, 1991).