Author: Writing Fiction about the Luminaries of the Beat Generation

Join us for a special book talk with local author Jonah Raskin about his novel, Beat Blues, San Francisco 1955, how and why he created his characters, his story and his setting where he found inspiration.

About the author: Jonah Raskin lives and writes in San Francisco. As a teenage beatnik who came of age reading Kerouac’s novels and Ginsberg’s poetry, Raskin taught courses on literature of the Beat Generation at Sonoma State University. He is the author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation and articles and essays about Kerouac and jazz and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s work. Raskin reads his stories on the Zoom event, Write If You Dare, and volunteers for Liquake events. He also wrote the text for the photos in Alternative Voices, about punk culture in the City in 1980s. Both his text and Jeanne Hansen’s images which were exhibited in the Main Library of the San Francisco Public Library.