[Photo from October 2013 by Marissa Molnar via Facebook]

Word is spreading that Maggie Estep, the writer-poet-performance artist and all-around cool person who came to some fame while living in the East Village in the early 1990s, has died. She was 50. (She described herself as a "Novelist, occasional poet, dog-lover, handstand enthusiast" on her Facebook page.)

According to friends, she suffered a massive heart attack on Monday.

She published seven novels and two spoken-word CDs. In 1993, she became a familiar presence on MTV, who featured her poetry as well as performances on the network's "Spoken Word Unplugged" program.

From a September 1994 profile in The New York Times:

Success for Ms. Estep hasn't necessarily translated into more material possessions. Her walk-up studio on East Fifth Street looks like the home of a starving artist. The furnishings are spartan. A bookcase crammed with cassettes and novels stands in one corner of the room; a wooden desk crowned with a laptop computer fills the opposite corner, where Ms. Estep spends many an afternoon wrestling with her muse. Other than a loft bed, a couple of beat-up chairs and an electric guitar lying in the middle of the floor, the room is empty.

"I've gotten paranoid now," she said, referring to her recent success. "I think, 'Oh my God, everybody hates me because I get too much attention.'"

She was currently living in Upstate New York and working on a new book.

Estep was born on March 20, 1963, in Summit, N.J.

Here she is in 1994 with "Hey Baby" ...