Ken Elton Kesey was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.
Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a 1968 nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe. The book is a popular example of the New Journalism literary style. Wolfe presents a firsthand account of the experiences of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, who traveled across the US in a colorfully painted school bus, Furthur, whose name was painted on the destination sign, indicating the general ethos of the Pranksters. Kesey and the Pranksters became famous for being the first group of people to collectively eat all of each other’s graces and their use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD in order to achieve expansion of their consciousness. The book chronicles the Acid Tests, encounters with notable figures of the time and describes Kesey's exile to Mexico and his arrests.
The Merry Pranksters were comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964.
Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. Due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, the footage of their journey was not released as a movie until the 2011 documentary film Magic Trip—although the bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Robert Stone was an American novelist.
Jenny Diski FRSL was an English writer. She had a troubled childhood, but was taken in and mentored by the novelist Doris Lessing; she lived in Lessing's house for four years. Diski was educated at University College London, and worked as a teacher during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Ken Babbs is a famous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s. He along with best friend and Prankster leader, Ken Kesey wrote the book Last Go Round. Babbs is best known for his participation in the Acid Tests and on the bus Furthur.
Who'll Stop the Rain is a 1978 American war film directed by Karel Reisz and starring Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, and Anthony Zerbe. It was released by United Artists and produced by Herb Jaffe and Gabriel Katzka with Sheldon Schrager and Roger Spottiswoode as executive producers. The screenplay was by Judith Rascoe and Robert Stone, based on Stone's novel Dog Soldiers (1974), the music score by Laurence Rosenthal, and the cinematography by Richard H. Kline. The movie was entered in the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.
Sometimes a Great Notion is the second novel by American author Ken Kesey, published in 1964. While One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) is more famous, many critics consider Sometimes a Great Notion Kesey's magnum opus. The story involves an Oregon family of gyppo loggers who cuts trees for a local mill in opposition to unionized workers who are on strike.
Connie May Fowler is an American novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter, and poet. Her semi-autobiographical novel, Before Women had Wings, received the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award. She adapted the novel for Oprah Winfrey and the subsequent Emmy-winning film starred Winfrey, Ellen Barkin, Julia Stiles, and Tina Majorino. Remembering Blue received the Chautauqua South Literary Award. Three of her novels were Dublin International Literary Award nominees. Her other novels include Sugar Cage and River of Hidden Dreams. The Problem with Murmur Lee was Redbook's premier book club selection. Her memoir, When Katie Wakes, explores her family's generational cycle of domestic violence. How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, a novel oft compared to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway in term of its structure, was published in 2010. Her latest book, a memoir titled "A Million Fragile bones," will be published April 20, 2017 by Twisted Road Publications. It explores her life on an isolated barrier island and the horrific impact and aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages.
Caverns is a 1989 novel written collaboratively as an experiment by Ken Kesey and a creative writing class that he taught at the University of Oregon. The cover of the book says it was written by O.U. Levon—the name of this supposed author, spelled backwards, is "novel U.O.". The full list of authors is: Robert Blucher, Ben Bochner, James Finley, Jeff Forester, Bennett Huffman, Lynn Jeffress, Ken Kesey, Neil Lidstrom, H. Highwater Powers, Jane Sather, Charles Varani, Meredith Wadley, Lidia Yukman and Ken Zimmerman.
Roland Merullo is an American author who writes novels, essays and memoir. His best-known works are the novels Breakfast with Buddha, In Revere, In Those Days, A Little Love Story, Revere Beach Boulevard and the memoir Revere Beach Elegy. His books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, German, Chinese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Czech and Italian.
Bill Roorbach is an American novelist, short story and nature writer, memoirist, journalist, blogger and critic.
Sterling Lord is an American literary agent who has represented some of the major names in American writing, including Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey and Howard Fast.
Lee Quarnstrom was an American journalist, executive editor of Larry Flynt’s Hustler Magazine, and a Beatnik. He was a core member of the Merry Band of Pranksters, a group loosely led by novelist Ken Kesey.
Lidia Yuknavitch is an American writer, teacher and editor based in Oregon. She is the author of the memoir The Chronology of Water, and the novels The Small Backs of Children,Dora: A Headcase, and The Book of Joan. She is also known for her TED talk "The Beauty of Being a Misfit", which has been viewed over 3.2 million times, and her follow-up book The Misfit's Manifesto.
Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys... and Baseball is a 2021 memoir by Robert Whiting, discussing his experiences in Tokyo.
