Widow Basquiat: A Memoir

A short, intimate memoir of Jean-Michel Basquiat told from the position of Suzanne Mallouk, his girlfriend and muse, rather than from the art world's.

Clement follows Basquiat from the subways and street writing of downtown New York into the city's elite galleries. The account passes through his dealings with Madonna, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel, and closes with his death from a heroin overdose in 1988, at twenty-seven. This Canongate edition, in its Canons series, carries an introduction by Michael Holman and an afterword by Clement. It runs to 208 pages. The book first appeared in 2000 from Payback Press.

Jennifer Clement was born in Connecticut in 1960 and raised largely in Mexico City. She also wrote novels including Prayers for the Stolen and Gun Love, and served as the first woman president of PEN International from 2015 to 2021.