Richard Hell

Richard Hell was born Richard Meyers in 1949 in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was raised. At 17 he dropped out of high school and moved alone to New York City. There he wrote and published poems and pamphlets for five years until, in 1972, he changed his name and began playing rock and roll. His album with the Voidoids, Blank Generation (Sire, 1977), was one of the initial handful of “punk” progenitors. In 1984 he quit music and resumed pursuing literature. He is the author of several books of fiction, poetry, essays, notebooks, autobiography, and collaborations, including Across the Years (Soyo, 1991), Artifact (Hanuman, 1992), The Voidoid (CUZ Editions, 1993), Go Now (Scribner, 1996), Hot and Cold (powerhouse, 2001), Godlike (Little House on the Bowery/Akashic, 2005, reprinted by NYRB Classics in 2026), I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp (Ecco, 2013), Massive Pissed Love (Soft Skull, 2015), and What Just Happened (Winter Edtions, 2023). With Tom Verlaine, he co-wrote the collection of poems Wanna Go Out? (Dot Books, 1973, published under the heteronym Theresa Stern) and with the artist Christopher Wool he collaborated on a book of image-texts, Psychopts (JMc & GHB Editions, 2008).