The Beat Generation Research Guide: The Generation

Everett Leroy Jones, also known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka has had his works be described as a defining part of the African-American culture, and was also associated with the Black Arts Movement. However, his works are highly controversial, with criticism including (but not limited to) racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and misogyny.

Carolyn Cassady was associated with the Beats through her marriage with Neal Cassady, and as a frequent character in the works of Jack Kerouac. In the 1970s, she was commissioned to write her memoirs in relation to Neal and Kerouac, which was published in 1976. She was also a founding member of the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (APM).

Neal Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg while visiting his friend at Columbia University and became well-acquainted with the circle in 1946, and met Carolyn Robinson in 1947. Cassady learned writing from Kerouac, and Carolyn recounted his intellectual pursuit in overcoming his challenging beginnings. After meeting Ken Kesey in 1962, Cassady was also associated with the Merry Pranksters, a group formed around Kesey and proponents for psychedelic drugs.

Gregory Nunzio Corso was a poet. He spent his early years in foster care and spent some time at Bellevue Hospital at 14. Corso began writing poetry and widely read classics while in correctional facility. In 1951, he worked at one of the Greenwich Village, where he also encountered Ginsberg, who introduced Corso to the Beat circle. Corso and Ginsberg later headed for San Francisco, drawn by poets associated with the San Francisco Renaissance, including Snyder and Ferlinghetti.

Elise Nada Cowen was a poet. She was close to Allen Ginsberg, and was also acquainted with Carl Solomon, whom she had met at Bellevue Hospital. Cowen and Ginsberg were romantically involved briefly, until Ginsberg fell in love with his later life partner, Peter Orlovsky. After her passing, many of her writings were destroyed, but surviving poems were later published posthumously.

Kirby Doyle was a modernist poet and a novelist. His work was published alongside Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, and Ginsberg in the Spring 1958 issue of the Chicago Review. He was also associated with the San Francisco Renaissance, and many of his works appear in other journals, including the San Francisco State College literary magazine, Measure, the Evergreen Review, and Ark II/Moby I.

In 1953 San Francisco, Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti co-published the magazine City Lights with Peter D. Martin, with whom he also co-founded the City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Ferlinghetti was also a poet, painter, and activist. He was arrested for publishing Ginsberg's Howl in 1957, and was acquitted from charges. He was also politically influenced by poet Kenneth Rexroth, a figure in the San Francisco Renaissance.

John Clellon Holmes was an author, poet, and professor, best known for writing the first "Beat" novel. He was close friends with other Beat writers, including Cassady, Ginsberg, and especially with Kerouac. He also taught at University of Arkansas, Yale University, and Brown University.

Robert Garnell Kaufman was a poet and jazz performance artist. He co-founded the Beatitude poetry magazine in 1959 along with other poets, including Ginsberg. He relocated to San Francisco in 1958, where he also became associated with Ferlinghetti and Corso. Several of his works were published under City Lights, and he also had a large following in France.

Joanne Kyger was introduced to the City Lights Bookstore in 1957, and met her later-husband Gary Snyder in 1960. The couple traveled to Japan, where Kyger studied Buddhism, and later to India with Ginsberg and Orlovsky. Her records of the travel would later be published. Kyger, however, never considered herself as part of the Beats movement. Other than the Beats, Kryger was also associated with the San Francisco Renaissance, Black Mountain, and the New York School.

Ken Elton Kesey was a novelist and essayist, best known for his role in the counterculture of the 1960s. He volunteered to take part in a study regarding the effects of various psychedelic drugs, and what turned out to be a study with backing from Project MKULTRA, and inspired his first novel. The Merry Pranksters were referred to as Kesey's followers, known for their communal living, organizing parties, and handing out LSD. The book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe was a firsthand account of the Merry Pranksters.

Joyce Johnson was an author, and first had a career in publishing as a secretary in a literary agency. Johnson was a friend of Cowen, and was introduced to Solomon, Burroughs, and Ginsberg by her instructor. While she was working on her first novel, Ginsberg set up a blind date for her and Kerouac, who encouraged her to write. As an editor, she worked on books related to the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, including Blues People by LeRoi Jones.

Hettie Jones was a poet. Along with her then-husband LeRoi Jones, she co-founded the literary magazine Yugen and the publication house Totem Press. The publication included early works of Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other Beats writers whom they had befriended. Jones is also an editor, and taught poetry, fiction, and memoir for a long time across many universities.

Along with fellow Barnard student Joan Vollmer, Edie Kerouac-Parker's apartment came to be frequented by many Beats members, including Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Carr. Her memoir about her life with Kerouac was published post-humously by City Lights.

Diane di Prima was a poet. Her first poetry book was published by Totem Press. She edited the newspaper The Floating Bear with LeRoi Jones, and had a daughter with him when he was still married to Hettie Jones. She taught poetry at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics along with other Beats members, including Ginsberg, Waldman, Burroughs, and Corso. She was also a classmate of activist and feminist Audre Lorde.

Gary Snyder is a poet, essayist, lecturer, translator, and environmental activist. His early works have been associated with the Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance. In 1959, he read at the October Sixth Gallery Reading where Ginsberg read "Howl" for the first time. Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, and taught English at the University of California, Davis.

Anne Waldman is a poet, an active member of the Outriders Poetry Project, and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Waldman is also associated with the New York School. Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti encouraged her passion and idea of poetry as a performance. She was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2011. In 2024, she curated an exhibition of visual arts by various Beat poets, including Burroughs, Corso, di Prima, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Kyger, titled "Beat Art Work: Power of the Gaze."

Ruth Elisabeth Weisz was an Austrian-American artist, poet, and playwright. As a poet, she was associated with jazz, or reading poetry to improvisational jazz music. She moved to San Francisco in 1952 and eventually befriended many Beat writers, including Kerouac. weiss began publishing in the magazine Beatitude in around 1956, and would embrace the title "Beat Generation" later in life.