Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born on March 24, 1919, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the fifth child of an Italian immigrant from Lombardy and a French mother. He was orphaned early, adopted by his uncles, and moved to Strasbourg, where he spent the first five years of his life. Upon returning to America, he was placed in a middle-class family of educators, the Bislands, and stayed with them until he finished elementary and high school. He studied at the University of South Carolina and earned his degree in literature in 1941. He immediately enlisted in the Navy. He participated in the Normandy landings and worked for the Resistance alongside the Free French and Norwegians. Later, he settled in Greenwich Village, while also studying at Columbia University until 1947. In 1948, he went to Paris to pursue his doctorate at the Sorbonne. There, he began writing his first novel, "Her," which was published 12 years later, and translating Prévert. He married an American student and returned to San Francisco. He wrote art criticism for magazines, mingled with expressionist painters, and attended the city's poetry gatherings. This formed the nucleus of the San Francisco poetry movement. He published his first poems in the local review City Lights. Together with the magazine's director, he founded the City Lights Books bookstore in 1953, aiming to specialize in "pocket poetry editions." In 1955, Ferlinghetti published his first book, "Pictures of the Gone World." He has traveled the world reading poetry, participated in films and live recordings, and is a publisher and friend to many beat (and non-beat) poets. A man of action, politically engaged, and a pacifist, he is widely known in Europe and America