The Kerouac Literary Festival 

The Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities at UMass Lowell is pleased to announce the following events as part of the 2014 Kerouac Literary Festival.

For a listing of additional Festival events organized by the Lowell-based community group “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!,” please see the schedule here.

With this collection of internationally acclaimed authors, musicians, and artists, the Kerouac Center continues to expand its purview beyond Kerouac and the Beats, even as it remains committed to examining the Beats’ extraordinarily broad influences on our contemporary world. 

Please take note of our sponsors! These events would be impossible without their help. Also, talks/readings by Louis Menand, Gish Jen, Anthony De Sa, and Maureen Stanton constitute a month-long Kerouac Writers Series, and these events are primarily sponsored by the UMass Lowell Research Centers on South Campus, as indicated below. Special thanks to the Lowell Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council for a grant to Michael Millner supporting the showing of films by Andy Warhol.

We also thank John Sampas and the Jack Kerouac Estate for their generous support.

For additional information, contact Michael Millner, Director, The Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities.

Schedule:

Louis Menand, “The Education of Andy Warhol”
Thurs. Oct. 9
4:30 pm
O’Leary 222, UMass Lowell South Campus, 61 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854
Free and open to the public
A Kerouac Writers Series Event
Sponsors: The Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities at UMass Lowell; UMass Lowell Philosophy Department; UMass Lowell Art Department
Louis Menand is best known for his Pulizer Prize-winning book The Metaphysical Club (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America. He writes for The New Yorker and teaches at Harvard University.

Lowell Rocks Warhol

Jolie Holland and Her Band, with films by Andy Warhol
Friday, Oct. 10
7:00 pm
Mill #5, 250 Jackson Street, Lowell, MA 01852
Free tickets (limit of four) available at http://bit.ly/JolieHolland
All ages welcome
Parking in city pay lot on Jackson Street
Sponsors: This program is supported in part by a grant to Michael Millner from the Lowell Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. We are also thankful for support from the UMass Lowell English Department, UMass Lowell Art Department; UMass Lowell Music Department; special thanks also to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA
In a multimedia performance, Warhol’s avant-garde films will mix with Jolie Holland’s unique, jazz-inflected, electrified Americana sound. Warhol’s films will include screen-tests of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlvosky, John Ashbery, Ann Buchanan, and Lou Reed. There will also be a partial showing of Warhol’s “Couch,” which includes an appearance by Kerouac. For more on Jolie Holland, see www.joliehollandmusic.com

Gish Jen
Thurs., Oct. 16
4:30 pm
O’Leary Mezzanine, UMass Lowell South Campus, 61 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854
Free and open to the public
A Kerouac Writers Series Event
Sponsors: UMass Lowell Center for Asian American Studies; the College of Fine Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences; the English Department; the American Studies Program; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; Professor Bob Forrant, History Department; the Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities; the UMass Lowell Psychology Department; the UMass Lowell Center for Arts & Ideas. For more information, please feel free to contact [email protected] or [email protected].
The author of four novels, Gish Jen has also published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Jen delivered the Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 2012. Her most recent book, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture and the Interdependent Self, is based on those lectures.

Anthony De Sa
Thurs., Oct. 23,
4:30 pm
O’Leary 222, UMass Lowell South Campus, 61 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854
Free and open to the public
A Kerouac Writers Series Event
Sponsor: UMass Lowell Saab-Pedroso Center for Portuguese Culture & Research
Anthony De Sa grew up in Toronto’s Portuguese community. His short fiction has been published in several North American literary magazines, and his first book, Barnacle Love, was critically acclaimed and became a finalist for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2009 Toronto Book Award.

Maureen Stanton
Wed., Oct 29
4:30 pm
O’Leary 222, UMass Lowell South Campus, 61 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854
Free and open to the public
A Kerouac Writers Series Event
Sponsor: UMass Lowell Center for Women and Work
Maureen Stanton’s essays and memoirs have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She received the Iowa Review Prize and the American Literary Review prize, and she has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, along with winning the 2012 Massachusetts Book Award in nonfiction for Killer Stuff and Tons of Money.