Researching Russ Kick

Russell Charles Kick III was born on July 20, 1969, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Early in his career, Kick wrote articles, a column, and a cover story for The Village Voice. He was the founder and editor of The Memory Hole, Memory Hole 2, and Altgov2, which published and archived U.S. government documents, including scientific studies, documents received under FOIA and civil rights-related reports, intelligence and covert action reports, consumer safety reports, and images including photographs of flag-draped coffins of American military personnel. These photographs of the war dead garnered worldwide media attention, including heavy rotation on all 24-hour news channels and front-page coverage on major newspapers, including The New York Times. The Memory Hole also gained attention for posting a completely uncensored version of a Justice Department report about its internal hiring practices, leading to a front-page story in The New York Times.

Kick was editor-at-large for The Disinformation Company and he wrote three books and edited six anthologies for them, including You Are Being Lied To and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know. He also was editing an anthology of classic and contemporary poems about death for Disinformation and Red Wheel/Weiser.

He compiled and edited a three-volume, 1,600-page anthology set entitled The Graphic Canon from Seven Stories Press. The series features the world's great literature interpreted by more than 120 artists and illustrators such as R. Crumb, Maxon Crumb, Will Eisner, Molly Crabapple, Sharon Rudahl, Dame Darcy, S. Clay Wilson, Gris Grimly, Roberta Gregory, Kim Deitch, and Tara Seibel. The first volume, From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons (spring 2012), covers literature from ancient times through the end of the eighteenth century. The second volume, Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray (fall 2012), is devoted completely to the nineteenth century. The third volume, From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (spring 2013), covers the entire twentieth century.

The next volume in the continuing project, The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature, was published in November 2014. The last volume completed in the series, Graphic Canon of Crime and Mystery was published in November 2017 by Seven Stories Press. It expanded the Graphic Canon series into the genres of crime and mystery.

From 2018 to 2021, he was the director of open records for Rise for the Animals where he expanded the ARLO (Animal Research Laboratory Overview) database to include information obtained through FOIA and public records requests related to animal experimentation and research facilities.

At the age of 52, Kick died on September 12, 2021, in Tucson, Arizona.