Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was born in Newark, New Jersey, and emerged as a prominent voice in the countercultural movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous work, "Howl," a powerful and controversial poem that challenged societal conventions and explored themes of sexuality, spirituality, and political dissent, became a touchstone for a generation seeking liberation and authenticity. Expelled from Cuba, and Czechoslovakia, crowned Prague May King, and placed on the FBI's Dangerous Security List all within the same year Ginsberg later traveled to and taught in China, Russia, India, Australia, Latin America, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, where he received Macedonia's Struga Poetry Festival "Golden Wreath" in 1986.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he won the University of Chicago’s Harriet Monroe Poetry Award in 1991 and France's "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et des Lettres" in 1993. As well as co-founding the Jack Kerouac School of Poetics at Naropa University, the first accredited Buddhist College in the Western world, he was Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College from 1986 till his death.
Ginsberg's relentless pursuit of personal and artistic freedom made him an iconic figure, and his activism and advocacy for social justice, including his involvement in anti-war and gay rights movements, further solidified his place in American literary and cultural history. He died due to complications of liver cancer in New York City, April 5, 1997. Through his groundbreaking poetry and fearless exploration of taboo subjects, Ginsberg remains an enduring symbol of artistic rebellion and the search for individual and collective enlightenment.
In 2006 Harper Collins published his complete Collected Poems, on the heels of Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996 and Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995. In 2006 DaCapo press published The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952 and are soon to publish his Selected Letters. He has two published photography collections: Allen Ginsberg Photographs (Twelvetrees Press) as well as Snapshot Poetics (Chronicle Books).
The documentary The Life & Times of Allen Ginsberg is in distribution through New Yorker Films and Telling Pictures’ Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl Film with animation by Eric Drooker is in production and set for a 2009 release.