Summer Writing Program

50 Years of Kerouac On the Road (.mp3)
Claudia Cragg, KGNU Radio, June, 2007
Claudia Cragg of KGNU interview with Anne Waldman, Steven Taylor and Lisa Birman about the Kerouac Festival, coming up June 30-July 1

News update: NICK URATA & TOM HAGERMAN (you may know them from the band DeVotchka) join a line-up that includes David Amram, Anne Waldman and others.

$20 General Admission/ $28 Gold Circle Reserved Seats (includes all taxes and fees). Click here for the Boulder Theater Box Office or call 303-786-7030.

Kerouac Festival Schedule
June 30–July 2, 2007 Boulder, CO
Admission to some events requires a Festival Package (see below). For general information call 303-245-4600.

Saturday, June 30, 1 p.m.
On the Road Marathon Reading
Yes, dear readers, the whole book! Lend your voice to a festive community reading with performances and refreshments. (Free and open to the public)

Sunday, July 1, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Jack Kerouac's Literary Legacy
Join scholars Hettie Jones, Joshua Kupetz, and George Mouratidis for a discussion of Kerouac's work. (Admission requires a Festival Package)

Sunday, July 1, 1–2:30 p.m.
The Musical Kerouac
Kerouac collaborator and renowned composer David Amram, Clark Coolidge and Kerouac School founder Anne Waldman explore the intersection of music and writing in Kerouac's work. (Admission requires a Festival Package)

Sunday, July 1, 3:30 p.m.
Robert Frank's Kerouac Films
Special screenings of Beat classic Pull My Daisy (co-directed with Alfred Leslie) and This Song for Jack (filmed at the 1982 Kerouac Conference at Naropa—provided by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). Hosted by David Amram. Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th St. (Free and open to the public).

Sunday, July 1, 6 p.m.
Cocktail Hour
Mingle at this special pre-Gala cocktail hour. The Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St . (Admission requires a Festival Package)

Sunday, July 1, 8 p.m.
Kerouac Gala
Featuring David Amram with Artie Moore and Tony Black, Anne Waldman, jazz-poetry duo Merge, Nick Urata & Tom Hagerman, Steven Taylor, Junior Burke, Janet Feder, and the film premiere of On the Road Now: Artists and Writers respond to Kerouac in the 21st Century featuring Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Amiri Baraka, and others. (Tickets available through Boulder Theater or by purchasing a Festival Package)

Monday, July 2, 2007, 8 p.m.
Kerouac School Alumni Reading
Visit with old friends and share new writing! The Laughing Goat Coffee House, 1709 Pearl St. (Free for Kerouac School Alumni).

Festival Packages
303-245-4600

The Dharma Bum/$40
A Weekend Pass and Gala Gold Circle Seating!

The Disembodied Poet/$45
A Weekend Pass, Gala Gold Circle Seating, and a copy of Naropa’s Bombay Gin #33!

The Rebel Angel/$50
A Weekend Pass, Gala Gold Circle Seating, a copy of Naropa’s Bombay Gin #33, and a Kerouac Festival tote!

All proceeds will support the Naropa Audio Archive and the Kerouac School’s Visiting Writers Program!

Call 303-245-4600 for Festival Packages, information, or to contribute to this summer’s fundraiser. SWP 07 students should call about free passes.

All events, unless otherwise indicated, are in Naropa University’s Performing Arts Center, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, CO.

Kerouac Festival passes can be picked up at one of the following times and locations:

Tuesday, June 26 - Friday, June 29
Between 9 am - 5 pm
Summer Writing Program Office
2100 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder

Saturday, June 30
Between 4 pm - 7 pm
Naropa University Green (outside the Allen Ginsberg Library) 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder

Sunday, July 1
Between 10:30 am - 2 pm
Naropa University's Performing Arts Center 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder

Kerouac Festival Weekend Contributors

Nick Urata (vocals, theremin, guitars, piano, trumpet) & Tom Hagerman (violin, accordion, piano) often perform as a duo and as part of the quartet DeVotchKa one of the most celebrated bands making music today. A disparate, yet articulate union of Eastern European, Southwestern, South American, and American roots music, both punk and folk. It is music unique enough, performed at virtuosic degree, and teeming with enough intangibles, to rightly be called ‘special.’

David Amram has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber music works and written many scores for Broadway theater and film, including Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate. He has also composed two operas as well as the score for the landmark 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by Jack Kerouac. He is the author of Vibrations, an autobiography, and Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, a memoir.

Clark Coolidge was born in Providence, RI, in 1939. Educated at Brown University, Coolidge attended the Vancouver Poetry Conference in 1963. The recipient of a Poets Foundation Award, and a NEA Writers Fellowship, his books include Space, Own Face, Mind: The One that Enters the Stories, Alien Tatters, On the Nameways, Volumes One and Two, and Far Out West, among others. He is a well-known Kerouac scholar and author of Now It's Jazz: Kerouac and the Sounds.

Hettie Jones is the author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for all ages. A writer and editor whose literary journals provided a forum for Jack Kerouac and Frank O’Hara among others, is the author of the memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones. Recent works include No Woman No Cry, From Midnight to Dawn, The Last Tracks of the Underground Railroad, and her third poetry collection, Doing 70.

Joshua Kupetz is a poet and literary/cultural critic who teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research interests include the intersection of literature and popular culture, specifically contemporary American literature and disability studies. He is part of a cohort of international scholars currently editing Jack Kerouac’s scroll manuscript of "On the Road," which will be published by Viking Penguin this year.

George Mouratidis is a contributor to the forthcoming “On the Road: The Original Scroll” and a Ph.D. candidate studying Beat Literature at the University of Melbourne.

Merge is comprised of poet Cassandra Cleghorn and reedman Erik Lawrence. The duo explores the marriage of poetry and music, a tradition first made famous by the 1957 collaborations of David Amram and Jack Kerouac. Merge’s arrangements are poems composed by Cleghorn in advance, on the page, with the musicians providing largely improvised accompaniment. Moving beyond conventional roles, the members of this ensemble take part in the true jazz tradition in which each player assumes equal responsibility as supporter and soloist.

Tony Black is a jazz drummer based in Denver where he performs regularly with his quartet, as well as fellow Denver musicians Freddie Rodriguez and Artie Moore. He has performed with many of the major figures in the music world and is regarded by his peers as a "musician's musician," constantly honing the traditions of the masters while creating his own approach.

Artie Moore is a Denver based bassist known by musicians around the country as a master of ensemble playing. He has played with Richie Cole, Bill Frisell, and John Bolivar, as well as Denver locals, Tony Black and Freddy Rodriguez.

The Kerouac Festival
Saturday, June 30—
Sunday, July 2 2007
The Jack Kerouac School
Celebrates 50 years of On the Road