Kurt Hemmer

Kurt Hemmer is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Beat Literature (Facts On File, 2007) and Professor of English at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. With filmmaker Tom Knoff, he produced several award-winning films: Janine Pommy Vega: As We Cover the Streets (2003), Rebel Roar: The Sound of Michael McClure (2004), Wow! Ted Joans Lives! (2010), Keenan (2011), Love Janine Pommy Vega (2014), and American Joyride (2022). His essays have appeared in Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays (Southern Illinois UP, 2009), A History of California Literature (Cambridge UP, 2015), Beat Drama (Bloomsbury, 2016), The Cambridge Companion to the Beats (Cambridge UP, 2017), Approaches to Teaching Baraka’s Dutchman (MLA, 2018), William S. Burroughs: Cutting Up the Century (Indiana UP, 2019), The Beats, Black Mountain, and New Modes in American Poetry (Clemson UP, 2021), Harold Norse: Poet Maverick, Gay Laureate (Clemson UP, 2022), and The Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac (Cambridge UP, 2024). In November 2022, he organized The Jack Kerouac Centenary Conference. He is currently the Secretary of the Beat Studies Association and working on a biography of Gregory Corso.