Symposium Panel | Noted Kerouac Scholars and Biographers

Kerouac scholars Ann Charters, Joyce Johnson, Holly George-Warren, and Regina Weinreich will discuss their experiences with, and thoughts on, Jack Kerouac.

The four panel members are all noted Kerouac scholars and biographers. Ann Charters and Joyce Johnson knew Kerouac personally and wrote about him. Holly George-Warren is doing a new, comprehensive biography to be released soon, while Regina Weinreich has published several works on him, notably his book of haikus. The four will discuss their varying experiences with and/or perspectives on Kerouac, his life, and his work.

Ann Charters was Kerouac's first biographer, and the only biographer to interview him about his work. She published the seminal work Kerouac: A Biography and Kerouac's first comprehensive bibliography. She is Professor Emerita of American Literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
In Joyce Johnson’s book Minor Characters, she wrote about growing up in the 1950’s, during a challenging period for women, and her love affair with Jack Kerouac. In 1983 it won a National Book Critics Circle Award and more recently was cited by The New York Times as one of the best memoirs of the 20th century. Her Kerouac biography, The Voice Is All, came out in 2012. Her six other books include three novels and a second memoir. Johnson’s work has also appeared in The New York Review, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. During her long career as an editor, she was responsible for the posthumous publication of Kerouac’s Vision of Cody.
Holly George-Warren is the award-winning author of 20 books and has contributed to numerous publications, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Fine Books & Collections, and the Times Literary Supplement, among others. She is currently writing the estate-sanctioned biography, Jack Kerouac: A Writer's Life, to be published by Viking Press.
Regina Weinreich, a filmmaker and widely published culture critic, is the author of Kerouac’s Spontaneous Poetics (1987), one of the earliest full-scale critical studies of Jack Kerouac’s literary work. She edited and compiled Kerouac’s Book of Haikus and wrote the introduction to his You’re a Genius All the Time. On the faculty of the Department of Humanities & Sciences at The School of Visual Arts since 1976, she teaches courses in Beat literature and aesthetics

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