Jaap van der Bent was Assistant Professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where he taught American literature, with an emphasis on the Beat Generation and African-American writing, until his retirement in September 2013. He was co-editor of Beat Culture: the 1950s and Beyond (VU University Press, 1999) and contributed to, among other publications, The Beat Generation: Critical Essays (Peter Lang, 2002), Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact (ABC-CLIO, 2005), The Transnational Beat Generation (2012), and Out of the Shadows: Beat Women are Not Beaten Women (2015). He has published many articles on American literature and the Beats in Dutch, British, and American newspapers, periodicals, and magazines. His Dutch publications include introductory essays, accompanied by translations, on the work of Harry Mathews, Michael McClure, Douglas Woolf, and Jack Spicer.