Marguerite J. Van Cook

Marguerite Van Cook came to New York with her punk band The Innocents, after touring the UK with The Clash. She stayed, opened a gallery, Ground Zero with her partner James Rombergerand curated numerous events and shows.

Her own work as an artist and film maker have placed her in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard. Her other credits include poet, (she was awarded the Van Rensselear Prize while at Columbia) writer, critic, comic book artist, actor and performance artist.

Her collaborative project with James Romberger and David Wojnarowicz, “Seven Miles a Second” a graphic memoir of the life and death Wojnarowicz is in its second edition in America and is a New York Times best Seller and has also been published in France.

She holds a BA. in English and Comparative Literature and an MA. in Modern European Studies from Columbia University and is currently an ABD completing a Ph.D. in French about 18th Century French Political Economics at The Graduate Center CUNY.

In 2006, Van Cook became the creative and managing director of the Howl! Arts Festival, which led in 2009 to the establishment of Howl HELP, a free emergency health & care service for downtown artists.

Currently, Van Cook is completing a dissertation on political economics in the novels of French eighteenth-century women.