Ann Charters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann Charters was born on November 10, 1936 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut and has been interested in Beat Writers since 1956 when as an undergraduate English major she attended the repeat performance of the Six Gallery Poetry reading in Berkley where Allen Ginsburg gave his second public reading of Howl. It was here that she first met Jack Kerouac. She began collecting books written by beat writers when she was a graduate student at Columbia University, and after completeing her doctorate she worked with Jack Kerouac (being a close friend of his) to compile his bibliography. After his death she wrote the first Kerouac biography "Kerouac" - 1973, unique as she was the only biographer he co-operated with. She also edited his posthumous collection "Scattered Poems". She has written a literay study of Charles Olson and biographies of black entertainer Bert Williams and (with her husband) the Russian Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. She was the general editor of the two volume encyclopedia "The Beats:Literary Bohemians in Postwar America" and has published a collection of her photographic portraits of well know writers in the book "Beats & Company"