All City Writers

First published in 2009, All City Writers: An Oral History in Times of Change set a new standard for books on graffiti writing. With a revolutionary approach, the book reconstructed the story of the “graffiti diaspora”: how writing spread from New York City across the globe, to mix with new cultures and produce greater variants in street art. Even today, the youth-led counterculture, which had seemingly peaked in the mid-’80s, is far from dead. On the contrary, old dogmas are overturned, new formal languages become popular and artists continue to experiment with techniques and inventions. Now in a fresh graphic guise, this expanded second edition of All City Writers features 50% more pages than the original, including 190 pages of new content and a 13-page extended timeline. It shines a light on the evolution of graffiti writing from the ’90s to the 2020s through interviews, stories and critical essays by researchers including Jacob Kimvall, Robert Kaltenhäuser, François Chastanet, Javier Abarca and Eric Hannerz. Using case studies from cities around the world, these contributors delve deeper into the cultural transformations that graffiti writing is still undergoing to this day, nearly 60 years after its birth. The easy-to-handle softcover book is further enriched by its sturdy binding, folded dust jacket and hot foil logo prints.