Ann Charters, a Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation scholar, is professor of American Literature emerita at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. in 1966, she worked with Kerouac to compile his bibliography, and was the only biographer who interviewed him about the circumstances in which he wrote his books. She is the author of his first biography, Kerouac, in 1973. She edited his posthumous poetry collection, Scattered Poems. She is also the editor of numerous books on Beat and other literature, including The Portable Beat Reader, The Portable Sixties Reader, Beat Down to Your Soul, The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader, and two volumes of Kerouac’s Selected Letters.