Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black

Cookie Mueller (1949-1989), nee Dorothy Karen Mueller, played leading roles in John Waters's Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living and Multiple Maniacs. She wrote for the East Village Eye and Details Magazine, performed in a series of plays by Gary Indiana and wrote numerous stories that would only be published posthumously. She died in New York City of AIDS-related complications at age 40.

• 'A how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism and cruelty' - OLIVIA LAING'Cookie Mueller wrote like a lunatic Uncle Remus - spinning little stories from Hell that will make any reader laugh out loud. She was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch doctor, an art-hag and, above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl' - JOHN WATERS'People fall in love with Cookie when they read her . . . She was a matchless beautician of the word' - RICHARD HELL

A how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism and cruelty