Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, filmmaker, performer—has published twenty-four books, including Stubble Archipelago, Ultramarine, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Camp Marmalade, Notes on Glaze, The Pink Trance Notebooks, My 1980s & Other Essays, Hotel Theory, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Andy Warhol, Humiliation, and Jackie Under My Skin. The Queen’s Throat, praised by Susan Sontag as “a brilliant book,” was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His new novel, My Lover, the Rabbi, was published in 2026 by FSG (U.S.) and Granta (U.K.), and his next book, The Imitation Mustache, a collection of essays, is forthcoming from FSG in March 2027. His essays and poems have been widely published in periodicals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. He wrote the libretto for Michael Daugherty’s Jackie O, which premiered at the Houston Grand Opera, and for Mohammed Fairouz’s Pierrot, commissioned by Da Capo Chamber Players. Koestenbaum has exhibited his art in solo shows at White Columns, 356 Mission, the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Millennium Film Workshop, Gattopardo, and “B” Dry Goods, as well as in two-person shows at the Wege Center for the Arts and Essex Flowers; his art has been included in many group shows, including at Air de Paris, Gordon Robichaux, Klaus von Nichtssagend, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Yossi Milo Gallery, FIERMAN, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017; he has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, the Poetry Project, the Hammer Museum, and the Francis Kite Club. He played the title role in Robert Ashley’s opera The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer at the 2014 Whitney Biennial and in 2016 at L.A.’s 356 Mission. His first feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (N.Y.) in 2021. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, an Academy of American Arts Award in Literature, and a Whiting Writers Award. His literary archive is in the Yale Collection of American Literature at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He received a B.A. from Harvard, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins, and a Ph.D. from Princeton. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.