Nancy Peters | |
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| Born | Nancy Joyce Peters October 3, 1936 Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Washington (BA, MLS) |
| Occupation(s) | Publisher, writer, bookstore owner |
| Employer | City Lights Books |
Nancy Joyce Peters (born October 3, 1936) is an American publisher, writer, and co-owner with Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books and Publishers in San Francisco until Ferlinghetti's 2021 death.
Nancy Peters was born in Seattle, and took a BA in literature and an MLS at the University of Washington. After travel and life abroad between 1961 and 1967, she was briefly employed as a librarian at the Library of Congress. In 1971 she moved to San Francisco and began working as an editor with City Lights. [1] In addition to editorial work Peters was involved in coordinating collaborations with literary and community organizations sponsoring readings, performances, and benefits for progressive social action.
Among the authors Peters worked with are Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Harold Norse, Diane di Prima, Julian Beck, Andrei Vozsesnesky, Anne Waldman, Andrei Codrescu, Sam Shepard, Ron Kovic, Ellen Ullman, Michael Parenti, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Rikki Ducornet, and Alejandro Murguia. Peters helped City Lights avoid a financial crisis in the early 1980s, and become a co-owner of the business in 1984. [1] She and Ferlinghetti bought the Columbus Avenue building that houses the bookstore in 1999. [2] City Lights became a registered landmark in 2001, the first time this recognition had been granted to a cultural institution as well as a building. [3]
In the book Literary San Francisco (by Peters & Ferlinghetti), she wrote about the bohemian and radical Bay Area literary scene, from the beginnings through the early 20th century. Co-editor of Unamerican Activities: The Campaign against the Underground Press, Howl on Trial, and Reclaiming San Francisco, she also edited Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination and a series of City Lights Reviews. Among other journals, her writing has appeared in Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, Cultural Correspondence , and The Beats: A Graphic History (Harvey Pekar). She is the translator of Antonio Tabucchi’s Dreams of Dreams and The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa and was a longtime member of the board of directors of the Istituto Italiano Scuola.
In 2007, after 23 years as City Lights' executive director, Peters stepped down but remains on the board of directors and is president of City Lights Foundation. In 2010, she was given the Northern California Book Association’s Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Ferlinghetti praised her as "one of the best literary editors in the country." [4]
In 1978, she married the Surrealist–Beat Generation poet Philip Lamantia (1927–2005), who lectured at the Art Institute and San Francisco State University. Peters participated with Lamantia in the World Surrealist Exhibition in Chicago in 1976, and they sometimes read together at such events as a benefit for Hopi and Navajo traditional peoples and the Santa Barbara Poetry Festival, and they recorded for the San Francisco Poetry Center Archives. Fourteen of her poems were published in a Black Swan Press chapbook entitled It’s In the Wind. [5] Her poetry was included in Surrealist Women, An International Anthology [6] and in Anthologie des Poètes Surréalistes Américains.
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The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon.
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, Ferlinghetti was best known for his second collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies. When Ferlinghetti turned 100 in March 2019, the city of San Francisco turned his birthday, March 24, into "Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day".
Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. Both the store and the publishers became widely known following the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's influential collection Howl and Other Poems. Nancy Peters started working there in 1971 and retired as executive director in 2007. In 2001, City Lights was made an official historic landmark. City Lights is located at 261 Columbus Avenue. While formally located in Chinatown, it self-identifies as part of immediately adjacent North Beach.
Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (1905–1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider himself to be a Beat poet, and disliked the association, he was dubbed the "Father of the Beats" by Time magazine. Largely self-educated, Rexroth learned several languages and translated poems from Chinese, French, Spanish, and Japanese.
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde in the 1950s. However, others felt this renaissance was a broader phenomenon and should be seen as also encompassing the visual and performing arts, philosophy, cross-cultural interests, and new social sensibilities.
Philip Lamantia was an American poet, writer and lecturer. His poetry incorporated stylistic experimentation and transgressive themes, and has been regarded as surrealist and visionary, contributing to the literature of the Beat Generation.
The City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a series of poetry collections published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books of San Francisco since August 1955.
The Six Gallery reading was an important poetry event that took place on Friday, October 7, 1955, at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco.
Andrew Joron is an American writer of experimental poetry, speculative fiction, and lyrical and critical essays. He began by writing science fiction poetry. Joron's later poetry, combining scientific and philosophical ideas with the sonic properties of language, has been compared to the work of the Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov. Joron currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In fall 2014, Joron joined the faculty of the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.
Neeli Cherkovski is an American poet and memoirist, who has resided since 1975 in San Francisco.
Harold Norse was an American writer who created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse was widely published and anthologized.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Donald Merriam Allen was an American editor, publisher and translator of American literature. He is best known for his project The New American Poetry 1945-1960 (1960), one of the anthologies of contemporary American writing he released.
David Meltzer was an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti described him as "one of the greats of post-World-War-Two San Francisco poets and musicians". Meltzer came to prominence with inclusion of his work in the anthology, The New American Poetry 1945–1960.
Richard William McBride was an American beat poet, playwright and novelist. He worked at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers from 1954 to 1969.
Bill Morgan is an American writer, editor and painter, best known for his work as an archivist and bibliographer for public figures such as Allen Ginsberg Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Abbie Hoffman, and Timothy Leary.
Garrett Caples is an American poet and former music and arts journalist. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, he currently lives in San Francisco, California, after fifteen years in Oakland. An editor at City Lights Books, Caples curates the new American poetry series, City Lights Spotlight. From 2005 to 2014, he wrote on hip hop, literature, and painting for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and has written fiction on unusual sexual practices, like omorashi.
Shigeyoshi "Shig" Murao was a Japanese-American bookseller who is mainly remembered as the City Lights manager and clerk who was arrested on June 3, 1957, for selling Allen Ginsberg's Howl to an undercover San Francisco police officer. In the trial that followed, Murao was charged with selling the book and Lawrence Ferlinghetti with publishing it. Murao and Ferlinghetti were exonerated, and Howl was judged protected under the First Amendment, a decision that paved the way for the publication of Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, William Burroughs, and many other writers who offended the sensibilities of the majority.
