''Sensitive Skin'' was a magazine created and edited by B. Kold and Norman Douglas. Started in 1991, the first four issues were titled ''Peau Sensible'', which is French for "Sensitive Skin". Subsequent issues were titled in English. In 1994,
John Farris
John Lee Farris (born July 26, 1936) is an American writer, known largely for his work in the southern Gothic genre.
Life
Farris was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, to parents John Linder Farris (1909–1982) and Eleanor Carter Farris (19 ...
, Patricia Winter, and Darius James joined the editorial team. That same year, Mr. E. Oso took over editorial duties for the final issue. The magazine is based in
Mill Valley, California
Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 census.
Mill Valley is located on the western and ...
.
''Sensitive Skin'' magazine included short fiction, screenwriting, poetry, reviews, drawings, essays, and photographs by both established and emerging writers and artists, mainly from New York. The publication also partnered with
The Living Theatre
The Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in 1947 and based in New York City. It is the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States. For most of its history it was led by its founders, actress Judith Malina and painter/p ...
to host release parties and benefits. ''Sensitive Skin'' published downtown New York writers including
John Giorno
John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) was an American poet and performance artist. He founded the not-for-profit production company Giorno Poetry Systems and organized a number of early multimedia poetry experiments and events, i ...
,
Herbert Huncke
Herbert Edwin Huncke (January 9, 1915 – August 8, 1996) was an American writer and poet, and an active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America. He was a member of the Beat ...
,
Jack Micheline
Jack Micheline (November 6, 1929 – February 27, 1998), born Harold Martin Silver, was an American painter and poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. One of San Francisco's original Beat poets, he was an innovative artist who was active in th ...
Eileen Myles
Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. No ...
, David Rattray, Chris Kraus, David Ulin, Sparrow, Mike Topp, Ron Kolm,
Richard Hell
Richard Lester Meyers (born October 2, 1949), better known by his stage name Richard Hell, is an American singer, songwriter, bass guitarist and writer.
Hell was in several important early punk rock bands, including Neon Boys, Television and ...
,
Bob Holman
Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author ...
,
Wanda Phipps
Wanda is a female given name of Polish origin. It probably derives from the tribal name of the Wends.Campbell, Mike"Meaning, Origin, and History of the Name Wanda."''Behind the Name.'' Accessed on August 12, 2010. The name has long been popular i ...
,
Maggie Estep
Margaret Ann "Maggie" Estep (March 20, 1963 – February 12, 2014) was an American writer and poet, best known for coming to prominence during the height of the spoken word and poetry slam performance rage. She published seven books and r ...
and
Taylor Mead
Taylor Mead (December 31, 1924 – May 8, 2013) was an American writer, actor and performer. Mead appeared in several of Andy Warhol's underground films filmed at Warhol's Factory, including ''Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of'' (1963) and ...
, among many others.
Online version
After a sixteen year hiatus, ''Sensitive Skin'' was relaunched as an online magazine on June 18, 2010, by Bernard Meisler (publisher and managing editor) and Tim Beckett (webmaster and editor). The first issue contained work by
Justine Frischmann
Justine Elinor Frischmann (born 16 September 1969) is an English artist and retired musician. She was the lead singer of the Britpop band Elastica after forming Suede, before retiring from the music industry and pursuing a career as a painter ...
, Andrew Huebner, Jose Padua, Tim Beckett, Steve Horowitz, Bob Bannister and
Bart Plantenga Bart Plantenga is a writer who has been called "the world's expert on yodeling and the "Alan Lomax of not just the yodeling world but yodeling worldwide."Samuel Delany, Craig Clevenger, Marc Olmsted, Emily XYZ, Darius James,
Gary Indiana
Gary Indiana (b. 1950 as Gary Hoisington in Derry, New Hampshire) is an American writer, actor, artist, and cultural critic. He served as the art critic for the ''Village Voice'' weekly newspaper from 1985 to 1988. Indiana is best known for his ...
,
Sharon Mesmer
Sharon Mesmer (born in 1960) is a Polish-American poet, fiction writer, essayist and professor of creative writing. Her poetry collections are ''Annoying Diabetic Bitch'' (Combo Books, 2008), ''The Virgin Formica'' (Hanging Loose Press, 2008), '' ...
,
Nick Zedd
Nick may refer to:
* Nick (given name)
* A cricket term for a slight deviation of the ball off the edge of the bat
* British slang for being arrested
* British slang for a police station
* British slang for stealing
* Short for nickname
Pl ...
,
Stewart Home
Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative '' 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), a ...
John S. Hall
John S. Hall (born John Charles Hall, September 2, 1960) is an American poet, author, singer and lawyer perhaps best known for his work with King Missile, an avant-garde band that he co-founded in 1986 and has since led in various incarnations ...
Marty Thau
Marty Thau (December 7, 1938 – February 13, 2014) was an American rock 'n' roll entrepreneur and music producer. He was best known as the founder of indie Punk rock, punk—New wave music, new wave label Red Star Records in 1977, and for being t ...
,
Marguerite Van Cook
Marguerite Van Cook (née Martin) (born 1954) is an English artist, writer, musician/singer and filmmaker. She was born in Portsmouth, England and now resides in New York City on the Lower East Side, in the East Village. She attended Portsmouth ...
Shalom Neuman
FusionArts Museum(s), first founded at 57 Stanton Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side are a series of curated exhibition spaces dedicated to the exhibition and archiving of "fusion art". The museum was and remains at its successive locations a n ...
,
John Lurie
John Lurie (born December 14, 1952) is an American musician, painter, actor, director, and producer. He co-founded the Lounge Lizards jazz ensemble; has acted in 19 films, including ''Stranger than Paradise'' and ''Down by Law''; has composed a ...
, Ruby Ray and Hal Hirshorn, video by Kevin Rafferty and music by
Ralph Carney
Ralph (pronounced ; or ,) is a male given name of English, Scottish and Irish origin, derived from the Old English ''Rædwulf'' and Radulf, cognate with the Old Norse ''Raðulfr'' (''rað'' "counsel" and ''ulfr'' "wolf").
The most common forms ...
,
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp (born March 1, 1951) is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer.
A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released ...
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
(by
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Genera ...
) and
Fred Frith
Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser.
Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock ...
.
In December 2011, Sensitive Skin Books was launched. Titles released so far include ''East of Bowery'', with a text by Drew Hubner and photographs by Ted Barron, ''Barefoot in the Heart'', an oral history of
Neem Karoli Baba
Neem Karoli Baba () or Neeb Karori Baba () ( – 11 September 1973), known to his followers as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu guru and a devotee of the Hindu deity Hanuman. He is known outside India for being the spiritual master of a number of Ame ...
edited by Keshav Das, ''Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming'' by Carl Watson, and ''Music: Drawing Down the Muse'' by David West.
Bernard Meisler won an Acker Award for publishing Sensitive Skin in 2014.Acker Award /ref>