Lawrence Ferlinghetti

born March 24, 1919, is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co – founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind (New York: New Directions, 1958), a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over one million copies and continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. His paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world and can be seen regularly at the George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions. In 2003 he was awarded the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, the Author’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters.