Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black

A new edition of the only story collection compiled by legendary writer, actress, ex-biker, and columnist Cookie Mueller, featuring additional writings.

First published in 1991, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black was the only story collection that the legendary writer, actress, ex-biker, and columnist Cookie Mueller compiled in her lifetime. Featuring a new introduction by Olivia Laing and an afterword by the book's first editor, Chris Kraus, this new edition collects all of Mueller's fiction, together with her Details magazine columns (1982-1989) and other writings.

The additional stories were discovered by Amy Scholder, who edited the anthology Ask Dr. Mueller for High Risk/Serpent's Tail books in 1996. As Scholder writes in her introduction, the new stories were "written around the same time she wrote the stories in Walking Through Clear Water, but for some reason Cookie decided not to include them. They are darker than most of her other stories; they are the quotidian Cookie, and that is why I especially love them." Mueller's life and work were celebrated in Chloe Griffith's 2014 oral biography Edgewise, bringing her work to a new generation of readers.