Lawrence Ferlinghetti

(March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021, Yonkers New York ) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. He was the author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration.

Lawrence first read his Coney Island of Mind on KPFA in Berkeley in 1956. I the early seventies he wrote a radio play called Let’s Go that was later produced as part of the Bay Area Radio Drama Locations series as One of These Days (or nights). In 2001 Robyn Ravlich from ABC Sydney asked Lawrence to read from his translated selection of poems by Jacque Prévert and then commissioned the work Ferlinghetti: San Francisco Locations. In 2002 the Creative Work Fund of San Francisco funded a three one-hour series documenting Lawrence’s life from his conception on the shores of the Hudson in Ossining, New York to the seas of Normandy, Bixby Canyon, Big Sur and San Francisco. The series Ferlinghetti: Open Eye, Open Mind premiered on KQED in April of 2007.

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