William Seward Burroughs, II was born on February 5th, 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1936, he graduated from Harvard. He moved to New York City after traveling around a bit after experimenting with different ways of living. In New York, he met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. During his stint in the Big Apple, he began to experiment with morphine and cocaine. In the mid-Fifties, Burroughs bought a farm in East Texas with common-law wife Joan Vollmer Adams and friend Herbert Huncke. While on a trip to Mexico with Joan and their children, Burroughs wanted to show off his skills to his friends. He put a drinking glass on Joan's head and attempted to shoot it off in a William Tell-esque way. Instead, he ended up shooting and killing her. After this, he roamed through South America, then traveled to Tangiers in the late Fifties. He was joined here in 1959 by Kerouac and Ginsberg. He wrote many novels during the next 30 years or so. In 1992, he teamed up with Kurt Cobain and released a spoken-word CD entitled, "The Priest They Called Him" in which Cobain plays guitar over Burroughs' spoken-word track. Burroughs died in 1997.
Carolyn Cassady Gregory Corso Gary Snyder Kenneth Rexroth Lucien Carr Michael McClure
John Clellon Holmes Philip Lamantia Bob Kaufman Jan Kerouac LeRoi Jones Bob Dylan
Charles Bukowski Anne Waldman Joanne Kyger Herbert Huncke
Peter Orlovsky Philip Whalen
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