Now

8.26.2010

Book Cover for The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees

Here's the just-designed book cover for my new poetry collection, The Crows Were Laughing in Their Trees, forthcoming from White Pine Press in spring 2011. The cover was designed by the talented Steve Smock who also designed the cover for my last poetry collection, Of Whiskey & Winter. I love this cover. It's as dark and provocative as the poetry - a perfect cover for the book. This ain't Dr. Seuss.

[Full size cover for The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees]

8.24.2010

Letter in New York Times Book Review

I just heard that a letter I wrote in response to a shoddy review of the new book, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters will be published in this Sunday's (8/29) New York Times Book Review. I'm pretty sure they'll print the letter online too, so I'll post a link when it goes up. Or else I'll just post the letter here. Sometimes you just gotta call bullshit when you see it and sometimes it actually gets heard!

8.23.2010

White Hand Society Update

The excellent staff at City Lights is moving White Hand Society through the pre-publication channels like the true pros that they are. Galleys of the book will be going out any day now to key publication outlets and media. At that point, the book is out in the world, beyond the small pond of Peter-City Lights and into the larger ocean of words. I don't know if it's because I just went through a bunch of this with Growing Up Dead or if this book is less personal (i.e. not a memoir) or if I'm just really psyched about how it came out, but I've got no twinge of nerves at all about this process. All I feel is excited. My goal was to shine light on the relationship between Ginsberg and Leary - a relationship that was fascinating to me and also lesser known than many other key counterculture relationships - and that's what I did. So now I want people to read all about it! My other joy is that key people on both sides of this book - the Leary folks and the Ginsberg folks - have been supportive about it and that makes me feel like I hit the nail on the head too. Once these pre-publication galleys go out, it'll be a short hop to proper publication and then the book is really, truly and finally in the world. Right where I wanted it. In your hands? Here's hoping.

8.9.2010

In honor of Jerry Garcia, gone 15 years today

Along with thousands of other people, I'm thinking about Jerry Garcia's death today. It's been 15 years since Jerry died and his timeless playing and singing still shape my life on a daily basis. I was thinking of writing something, a tribute, to say something about this sad anniversary. But all that came out was: I miss you, Jerry. So instead, I want to share this passage on Jerry from Growing Up Dead. Until I wrote this, I'd never thought about the parallels between Jerry's young adult years and the lives so many of us lived following the Dead. He hopped in a car with his buddy and chased the music cross-country, making friends, getting into scrapes, and having adventures along the way - even taping shows. Sound familiar? Maybe Jerry Garcia was the first Deadhead. At the very least, he knew, firsthand, how much we (America) needed what he had to provide. And he delivered until he couldn't deliver no more. What more could he give us? What more could we ask? There was a wonderful, simple bumper sticker back in the day that sums it up well... that says just what I want to say today. Thank you, Jerry.

from the Growing Up Dead chapter SO MANY ROADS

In his perfectly flip manner, Bob Weir once said of Deadheads: “They seem to be enjoying themselves. If I were fresh out of school, I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do than just take up and travel around, following a band I really liked.”

He’s got a point. This is an absolutely reasonable observation.

Fittingly enough, though, Jerry Garcia gave the most personally resonant quotes I have ever read about being a Deadhead and the gift that the Dead gave to late-–twentieth-century American kids,:
“...here we are, we’re getting into our fifties, and where are these people who keep coming to our shows coming from? What do they find so fascinating about these middle-aged bastards playing basically the same thing we’ve always played? I mean, what do seventeen-year-olds find fascinating about this? I can’t believe it’s just because they’re interested in picking up on the Sixties, which they missed. Come on, hey, the Sixties were fun, but shit, it’s fun being young, you know, nobody really misses out on that. So what is it about the Nineties in America? There must be a dearth of fun out there in America. Or adventure. Maybe that’s it, maybe we’re just one of the last adventures in America. I don’t know.”

By 1993, Garcia had crystallized the kernel of this idea into a more unified, dead-on statement: “You can’t hop freights anymore but you can chase the Grateful Dead around. You can have all your tires blown out in some weird town in the Midwest and you can get hell from strangers. You can have something that lasts throughout your life as an adventure, the times you took chances. I think that’s essential in anybody’s life, and it’s harder and harder to do in America. If we’re providing some margin of that possibility, then that’s great.”

Even before the Dead turned into road warriors, Jerry had been influenced heavily by Jack Kerouac and the magical promise of the picaresque narrative. The transformative power of the road. In light of that, his stated dedication to providing an outlet for that youthful wandering–—so important to America’s artistic heritage-—strikes me as a particularly selfless and underemphasized contribution to the larger culture.

In 1964, as a banjo slinger and folk enthusiast, Jerry and his like-minded friend Sandy Rothman had hopped into Jerry’s ’61 Corvair to catch shows on the bluegrass circuit. As Dennis McNally notes in his Dead biography, A Long Strange Trip: “The summer of 1964 was a hell of a time for a Jew and a ‘Mexican’ driving a car with California plates to go into the deep South. It was the Freedom Summer, and the South was writhing with change–—and danger.” He goes on to tell how Garcia, “shaved his goatee and cut his hair short, and in his new windbreaker he looked, Sara [his wife at the time] thought, like a gas station attendant. He and Sandy managed to traverse the South without overt incident, but Jerry would remember it as ‘creepy,’ based on the reactions they got to their license plates and ‘foreign-sounding’ names.”

Also predictive of the Dead times to come, they brought along a Wollensak recorder and blank seven-inch tapes to record the bluegrass music so that they could listen and learn from it after the tour was over. Together, Garcia and Rothman toured the country, digging the smoking bluegrass music, taping shows, and meeting like-minded music-heads. As fate would have it, another young folkie and mandolin prodigy, David Grisman, had started out from the East Coast on a similar mission. Garcia and Grisman met in the parking lot outside a bluegrass festival in North Carolina. Grisman and his band, the New York Ramblers, had just won the Union Grove Fiddler’s Competition at the festival. Garcia told the story about meeting Grisman to John Carlini in a 1991 interview for Guitar magazine: “I was traveling South with Sandy Rothman, and we were recording and meeting guys in bluegrass bands. We were hungry bluegrass nuts from the West Coast, where bluegrass never finds its way. Actually, we were accompanying the Kentucky Colonels at that time in the early sixties; were part of their tour across the United States. They were ending in Boston, but we went south to Alabama and Florida, and came up through Georgia. So we’d just gotten to Pennsylvania after being on the road for three to four weeks; I got out of the car, and Grisman was walking across the parking lot with kind of a long coat on and a mandolin case. I introduced myself, and we started talking, maybe picked a few tunes or something.”

That meeting would spark a friendship that lasted until Garcia’s death and resulted in numerous musical collaborations over the years. Garcia’s friendship with Rothman lasted the rest of his life too. In fact, it is no reach to say that Garcia’s friendships and collaborations with Rothman and Grisman helped spur a resurgent interest in roots music among American audiences in the 1980s and ‘90s. When Garcia re-formed his old band the Black Mountain Boys in 1987–—featuring Rothman on banjo–—they participated in a historic eighteen -show run of Jerry Garcia concertshows at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway. This success was followed by a rekindling of Garcia’s friendship with Grisman, which resulted, among other musical gems, in the 1993 album Not for Kids Only, a collection of roots music that has helped pass the torch to another generation of fans.

But before the albums, the Broadway shows, and the accolades, there were a bunch of music-loving kids traveling the country to chase after the music they loved, played by the musicians they admired. They were also out there to meet like-minded people and see more of the country. Maybe even have some adventures along the way.

8.6.2010

WHS blurb from Bill Morgan

Sarah Silverman at City Lights (try saying that 5 times fast) just passed along this amazing blurb by Bill Morgan in support of White Hand Society. Bill has published multiple volumes of biography about Allen Ginsberg and worked closely with Allen while he was alive. In fact, Bill is the archivist responsible for assembling, cataloging, and selling Ginsberg's massive archive. Without his work, my book wouldn't have been possible. So I'm proud as hell to have his endorsement:

"The Psychedelic Revolution of the Sixties began with the meeting of two visionary explorers into the unmapped regions of inner consciousness -- Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg. In the White Hand Society Peter Conners charts the course from the earliest dirt roads of laughing gas to the superhighways of LSD in one compelling story. It is a thrilling ride on what Ginsberg called the Trackless Transit System, going where no one else had dared venture. Take this as a new kind of guidebook into the mystery of the mind."

--Bill Morgan, author of The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation

8.2.2010

Book Stuff Including Dr. Ralph Metzner on White Hand Society

Holy crap, I can't believe I haven't updated this area since June 30th. Rather than make excuses, I'm just going to call it my summer break. Honestly, I think this is the longest I've gone without updating the NOW section in six years.

Much going on! City Lights is hard at work getting White Hand Societytypeset and ready to mail out advanced promo copies this month. To be onest, the heavy lifting is out of my hands for the moment - which is a welcomed break for me. Once fall kicks in, I'll be back giving readings and making sure everyone who might be interested in hearing about WHS, hears about WHS.

In addition to WHS, I just got th typeset version for my next poetry collection, The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees. That book won't be out until spring, but White Pine Press is on top of their game and pushing the book thru the pre-publication process. I'll have a cover image ready to show here by the end of the month too. With all my focus on non-fiction lately, I'm really excited to dive back into publishing my poetry and sharing it with people.

The most exciting thing from the past week was receiving this killer blurb from Dr. Ralph Metzner in support of White Hand Society. Metzner was Timothy Leary's second in command at Harvard and through the 1960s, so his endorsement of this book is amazingly special to me. 

He says:  

"Peter Conners has given us a wondrous tale of picaresque adventure and authentic friendship – between Leary the trickster-explorer-scientist and Ginsberg the activist-bard-philosopher, two seminal figures  who pioneered new pathways through the cultural maelstrom of the sixties."

                           --Ralph Metzner, co-author, with Ram Dass & Gary Bravo, of Birth of a Psychedelic Culture

Okay, updates here more frequently as publication for WHS approaches. I'm also on Facebook and update something there - writing and non-writing related - a few times a week, so if you're on FB shoot me a Friend Request and we'll hook up!

6.30.2010

Wiki'd + SONS

Thanks to the great crew at City Lights for putting up a Wikipedia page for my writing and editing work. Check it out here:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Conners

I'm also thrilled to be a part of this fascinating Belgian art project called Shoes or No Shoes. It's well beyond me to sum it up here, so I urge you to visit their site and look around. I love the concept and hope to see it in person some day!

http://shoesornoshoes.com/index.php

6.21.2010

GUD Interview at Booklife

Thanks to Jeremy L.C. Jones at Booklife for this outstanding write-up and interview about Growing Up Dead.

In Growing up Dead: the Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead, Peter Conners tells the story of coming of age in the suburbs in the 1980s and discovering the music of the Grateful Dead.  Starting in high school, Conners followed the Dead, learned to dance without inhibition, and discovered the joys of living a creative life through making music and writing.  Those first Dead shows started a lifelong romance that has permeated every aspect of Conners’ life.

I love Growing up Dead.  Not just because Conners and I are the same age (we were born within two weeks of each other), and not because we went to some of the same Dead shows (most notably Silver Stadium June 30, 1988 which gets a chapter in the book).  I love Growing up Dead because it is beautifully written — Conners has a poet’s grace, a seeker’s heart, and a musician’s ear. 

Maybe, too, I’ve been carrying this book around with me so much lately because Conners answers the question a lot of Deadheads, myself included, have struggled to answer over the years – why the Grateful Dead?

[Read the full interview here]

6.7.2010

GUD Movie + WHS Revisions

I've been way too lax on updating this site, but at least I've got some pretty good reasons.

•Growing Up Deadmovie! For the past few months, I've been working on a screenplay for GUD. The screenplay is now finished and I'm really proud of how it turned out. It's quite different than the book - really a fictionalized version that captures the spirit of the book and expands the story of some key characters (mainly Peter, Harry, Kelly, and Jay) during their senior year of high school. Imagine a cross between Dazed and Confused, Almost Famous, and the Grateful Dead Movie and you'll have a good snapshot of the film. So what happens next? Well, there's a great crew headed up by Producer/Director Mike Kolko who are hard at work making this film a reality. They've put together a comprehensive investment package about the project and are recruiting interested backers to get involved. If you're interested in hearing more, just shoot me a note and we'll go from there: phconners@hotmail.com

•White Hand Societyrevised. City Lights publisher (and my editor) Elaine Katzenberger gave me outstanding feedback on the initial draft of WHS, and then it was up to me to put her insights to good use. So I've been working on the final draft of the book, which involved another round of research, rewriting, and a bunch of new pages. Very exciting stuff and also a lot of hard work. I'm happy to say that the final WHS has been sent off to City Lights and now we're moving into the next stages... design, promotion, and, ultimately, publication in November 2010.

Between the GUD movie and WHS, things are going to start moving very fast very soon! I'll update here as regularly as possible and hope you'll keep checking in. I must admit, I post updates and other info at least 3-4 times a week on Facebook, so if you're on FB just "Friend Me" and we'll connect that way too.

As I've said here for years... The Best Is Yet To Come!

5.16.2010

Profiled on Originals + Poem in Greatcoat

I'm proud to be profiled on Jonathan Everitt's new blog feature Originals: An Occasional Look at Cool Creative People. Check it out here [Originals].

Likewise, I'm thrilled to have a poem titled The Directions that We Move from my forthcoming collection, The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees, in the new issue of [Greatcoat].

5.11.2010

Poetry Reading this Thursday (5/13) in Rochester

Visiting Writer Series at Writers & Books, 740 University Ave, Rochester, NY

Hosted by Steve Huff
Thurs., May 13: Nate Pritts and Peter Conners
$3 W&B members / $6 general public. 7 p.m.

Nate Pritts is the author of three full-length books of poems - The Wonderfull Yeare (Cooper Dillon Books, 2010), Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press, 2008) & Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX, 2007).  His poetry & prose have been published widely, both online & in print, in journals such as The Southern Review, Jacket, Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Octopus, & Forklift, Ohio among many others.

Nate has his MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College (‘00) & his PhD in British Romanticism from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette (‘03).  He lives in Syracuse, NY, where he teaches poetry for the Downtown Writer’s Center/YMCA & works online with gifted students through Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth.

He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N.

Peter Conners is author of the memoir, Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead (Da Capo Press, 2009). His new book, White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen  Ginsberg, will be published by City Lights in October 2010. His other books include the prose poetry collection Of Whiskey and Winter and the novella Emily Ate the Wind.  His next poetry collection, The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees, is forthcoming from White Pine Press in spring 2011. He is also editor of PP/FF: An Anthology which was published by Starcherone Books in April 2006. His writing appears regularly in such journals as Poetry International, Mississippi Review, Brooklyn Rail, Fiction International, Salt Hill, Hotel Amerika, Mid-American Review, The Bitter Oleander, and Beloit Fiction Journal and will be included in the Yale Anthology of Younger American Poets forthcoming from Yale University Press. 

5.1.2010

WHS Revisions + Becoming Dead Blog Shouts Out GUD + City Lights Shows Off WHS

The days are flying past while I try to finish final revisions on White Hand Society and yet, somehow, the rest of life doesn't feel the need to slow down to accomodate my workload. It just keeps going. Ready or not. But the revisions are going well - thanks in no small part to outstanding editorial feedback from my editor Elaine Katzenberger (who is also publisher of City Lights) - and the book keeps moving forward on schedule.

I received a cool note the other day from Elizabeth DePompei who reviewed GUD on her blog Becoming Dead. You can read the review here [ Becoming Dead Review of GUD]. Becoming Dead chronicles Elizabeth's rediscovery of the Grateful Dead and provides all sorts of cool links related to the band along with Elizabeth's GD-related musings.

City Lights has posted a White Hand Society pageon their website. It includes an informative write-up about the book, including some details on how it was researched and written. Check it out here [White Hand Society at City Lights].

4.20.2010

The New Book Cover Revealed!

What better day to unveil the stunning cover for my forthcoming book, White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg. The book will be published by City Lights in November 2010.

Here's a paragraph about the book:

"In 1960 Timothy Leary was not yet famous—or infamous—and Allen Ginsberg was both. Leary, eager to expand his psychedelic experiments at Harvard to include accomplished artists and writers, knew that Ginsberg held the key to bohemia’s elite. “America’s most conspicuous beatnik” was recruited as Ambassador of Psilocybin under the auspices of an Ivy League professor, and together they launched the psychedelic revolution and turned on the hippie generation. A who’s who of artists, pop culture, and political figures people this story of the life, times, and friendship of two of the most famous, charismatic, and controversial members of America’s counterculture."

And the cover looks like this:

                [White Hand Society]

4.14.2010

GUD Book Signing & Grateful Dead Movie Premier Tomorrow

Here's a nice article that appeared today in Rochester's alternative newsweekly, City Newspaper. It has all the details about my book signing tomorrow at the screeing for the new Dead movie, Crimson, White & Indigo.

When he was a teenager, local author Peter Conners took listening to his favorite band one step further than just attending shows and buying albums. He went out on a limb and joined the legendary Grateful Dead on the jam band's cross-country journey. In following the Dead from show to show, there's little doubt Conners has seen and experienced some crazy things in pursuit of hippy nirvana.

In conjunction with the Little Theatre's showing of the Grateful Dead's 1989 concert, "Crimson, White and Indigo," Conners will be on hand to sign copies of his book, "Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead." Following the showing of the concert (one of the more than 2000 the Dead played before the band dissolved following the death of member Jerry Garcia), Conners will be available to share more of his experiences of life on the road.

Not only can you have the opportunity to catch a Grateful Dead show without massive lines and watered-down beer, but you'll get the chance to meet an expert in Deadhead fandom. That's pretty far out.

"The Grateful Dead: Crimson, White and Indigo" will screen Thursday, April 15, 7 p.m. and Monday, April 19, 6:30 p.m. at Little Theatre, 240 East Ave. Tickets cost $12. The Peter Conners book signing will run Thursday 6-7 p.m. Note that tickets are scarce for the Thursday show. For more information call 258-0400 or visit thelittle.org.

Read the article online here [City Newspaper Article on Peter Conners at the Little Theatre]

4.12.2010

GUD Article in Boulder Weekly

I had a blast sharing the stage with 18 Switchbacks in Boulder! Here's a great article from Boulder Weekly about the event and the collaboration:

The Boulder Draft House, fresh off its one-year anniversary, is hosting a dynamic and unique event combining musical improvisation, poetry, long-term friendships and reminiscences of traveling with the Grateful Dead.

Todd Weiner, drummer for the starring quintet, 18 Switchbacks, explains that this performance will present a different look than what fans would expect from the band’s usual gigs.

“[We’re] bringing in [author] Peter Conners, who is a long-time collaborator, with me and other members of the band, in songwriting and [other things], and what we’re going to do is take Peter’s literary sense of things and throw it into the mix with the band,” Weiner says.

Conners, a poet, novelist and editor who occasionally has lived in Boulder, recently wrote a non-fiction account of life on the road following the Grateful Dead in his latest book, Growing Up Dead: the Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead. But Conners will be doing more than just a book signing.

Read the whole article here: [Peter Conners with 18 Switchbacks]

4.6.2010

GUD Spoken Word/Music Event this Friday in Boulder, Colorado

4.5.2010

GUD Signing at the Little Theatre

On Thursday, April 15 the beautiful and historic Little Theatre in Rochester, NY will be screeing the newest Grateful Dead concert movie release. The film is called Crimson, White and Indigo, and captures the Grateful Dead live at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 7, 1989. This was a stellar show that I was lucky enough to be at and I highly recommend checking out the movie. I'll be at the Little signing copies of Growing Up Dead before (6:00-7:00) and after the screening. I'll have books to sell there, so you can pick up a copy (or another copy!) or bring yours to be signed (please note that if you're buying a copy, I can only take cash or check.)

Here's the Little's website with event info [The Grateful Dead: Crimson, White and Indigo]

[View larger Little Theatre poster here]

3.25.2010

Growing Up Dead interview featured on Dead.net

Last July I was interviewed by David Gans for the Grateful Dead Hour. David tapes the show in Berkeley and this was recorded during a West Coast trip to promote the book. This was one of my favorite promos for Growing Up Dead - the interview was solid, plus David had me read some parts from the book. He also played some music related to the reading and, last but not least, "Shasta" from GUD came along and we talked some about Brent Mydland at the end. It was really a blast and it was a bonus getting to spend time with David after hearing his voice on the radio for so many years.   
 
The interview is this week's Grateful Dead Hour feature at the Grateful Dead's official Dead.net website. If you've got the mind, follow the below link and simply click on Listen Now to hear it: 
 
http://www.dead.net/features/gd-radio-hour/grateful-dead-hour-no-1087

3.16.2010

Upcoming Gig in Boulder, Colorado

On Friday, April 9th I'll be reading/performing in Boulder, Colorado with  the band 18 Switchbacks. This will be a special night of musical-literary collaboration that's sure to serve up some surprises for performers and audience alike. The gig is at the the Boulder Draft House at 2027 13th Street and will start around 9PM.

Here's a cool poster for the event that features artwork by Rochester, NY painter (& my friend) Steve Smock.

[Gig Poster for Peter Conners with 18 Switchbacks]

3.4.2010

Stuff

I've been working hard on the final draft of White Hand Society along with some other projects that are coming to fruition and I plan to be talking about soon. Busy hands, busy hands. Thanks for stopping by the site - please poke around, take your time, and I'll work on getting some updates here soon.

2.25.2009

Review of GUD from Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus

Christian Crumlish wrote this excellent review of GUD for the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus Conference Program. You can also read it online (and with proper formatting) at his blog [Media Junkie]

Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead

by Peter Conners

Da Capo Press, 2009

http://www.growingupdead.com/

Pick up just about any history or memoir of the Grateful Dead and you'll hear about bluegrass, the Acid Tests, Live/Dead, Europe in '72, the hiatus, and the Pyramids in excruciating detail. Then they years start to fly by, punctuated by the occasional happening: hit song and tour with Dylan in '87, return to Europe in '90, and then all of a sudden Jerry is dead and we're into that nebulous post-Grateful period that continues to this day. This is understandable, but for Dead fans like my self who got on the bus in the 1980s, this leaves out a big important part of the story.

During the long period between album releases, when perhaps various bandmembers' rebellious proclivities were beginning to catch up with them, the Dead scene experienced something of a third wind. Perhaps it was the advent of the "just say no" years and the growing need for a refuge for the disaffected youth of that era. Garcia famously called the Dead tour the last remaining great American adventure. Certainly my own experience when I stumbled into the parking lot in 1984 was a stiff sense of incredulity: how was this through-the-looking-glass society existing in parallel with the malls and office parks of the Reagan 80s? How were we getting away with this? How could it possibly last? 

As we know, it couldn't last. It was a bubble of sorts, but its surface tension held for a crucial stretch of years, long enough to sustain this pocket of the counterculture until reinforcements could arrive, tune up, plug in, and rock out. 

Peter Conners is a bit younger than I am, but he got on the bus just before the tidal wave of a "hit song on MTV" crashed into the parking lot scene of 1987 and his memoir, Growing Up Dead, represents the first holographic capture of exactly what it felt like at just that time. He limns the road, the buses, the parking lots, and most importantly the shows, the music, and lyrics of the Grateful Dead in the 1980s. He described growing up in a suburban middle class enclave and falling in with a stoner crowd and eventually finding himself in the world of the Deadheads.

Perhaps most importantly, he finds his muse and toward the end of the tale, when he comes off the road, he finds that he has become a poet. The language of the Dead spoke to him and brought something out of him that his teachers and his day-to-day life did not manage to reach. As Conners said in an interview conducted on the Well's public Inkwell conference:

When I was growing up, I didn't have any friends who connected to language on that same level. I still remember sharing my first poems with friends. To their credit, they were openly enthusiastic. No one in our group, myself included, knew anything about poetry or literature outside of what we were fed in school. We all bonded over lyrics, singing them, writing them on our notebooks, etc., but that was more about our love of the bands and reinforcing our bonds with each other.

His is not the tawdry tale of excess and destruction and repentance that we've been hearing since the opium eaters but one of enlightenment, joy, self-discovery and, ultimately, graduation into adulthood and self-possession.

Conners is a gifted storyteller and delivers his tale not as a series of banal or hyperbolic generalities but in a well-knit sequence of anecdotes and portraits. The book moves along swiftly and sweeps you up in the life path of this young person questing in search of fun and liberty and friendship and love.

The story of the Grateful Dead from the viewpoint of the musicians and the Peninsula milieu in which the coalesced has been told to death (and I've devoured with pleasure each telling and re-telling of those days) and to some extent the personal stories of the extended community rooted in those early days and into the 1970s has at least begun to be told, but Growing Up Dead crucially fills a gap in the story without which my own experience lacks a literary context, and for this I am, dare I say it? grateful.

2.22.2010

Random Notes + A Random Note

I've been busy working on revisions of White Hand Society so haven't had much time for posting here lately. I actually post pretty often on Facebook though because it's a little easier and quicker. If you're of a mind, feel free to Friend me there and I'll respond.

I'm expecting to see a cover of WHS any day now and will post that when it arrives. I've given some input on ideas for it, but I have no idea what it will look like, so I'm eager to give it a look!

Received a note from my Kindergarten (!) teacher today. It sorta blew my mind, so I thought I'd share it here:

Dear Peter,

Saw your Growing Up Dead article last September. Realized that you are older now than I was when you were in Kindergarten at Allen Creek. You turn 40 this year. I was 34 when you said, "You don't have a mother!" (I had my folks stop by to meet you that Spring when they came up from Florida.)

Wanted to laugh with you so have tried a couple of times to call. It didn't work. So, thus, this note. I think it's funny. Hope you do, too.

Jean Logan
Alias: Mrs. Woodrow

2.13.2010

Happy 2/13!

[The story of 2.13]

2.11.2010

GUD at the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus

From Feb 10-13, Albuquerque, NM is hosting the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus. The beautiful book that the group publishes for the conference states: "For the past thirteen years, the Southwest/Texas American/Popular Culture Association's annual conference has featured a Grateful Dead area, where an informal group of scholars who study the Grateful Dead phenomena meet and present papers."

This year, the group asked to print an "Outtake" from GUD in the conference book. There is also a stellar review of GUD written by Christian Crumlish. I'd love to post the whole thing here because it's an amazing review. Maybe I'll scan it and post it or something. Here's a sample:

"Conners is a gifted storyteller and delivers his tale not as a series of banal or hyperbolic generalities but in a well-knit sequence of anecdotes and portaits. The book moves along swiftly and sweeps you up in the life path of a bright, thoughtful young person questing in search of fun and liberty and friendship and love."

Thank you G.D. Scholars Caucus and especially Christian Crumlish and Nicholas G. Meriwether (who requested the "outtake" for the book)!

2.5.2010

White Hand Society - the Ooo-ficial Press Release

Press Release

For Immediate Release

February 1, 2010

City Lights Publishers is happy to announce the acquisition of The White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg by Peter Conners.  Editorial Director Elaine Katzenberger purchased World Rights/English language for the book from the Linda Roghaar Agency.  The White Hand Society will be published in October 2010.  Conners is author of the memoir Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead (Da Capo Press, 2009).  The White Hand Society examines the life and friendship of two of the most famous, controversial and charismatic members of the counterculture, and the impact their relationship had on America.  A who's who of artists and cultural figures appear, as we follow the fruits and fallout of this "psychedelic partnership", in this engaging tale of the development and popularization of LSD.

For more information, please contact Stacey Lewis, Publicity & Marketing Director, at 415 362 1901 & stacey@citylights.com

* * *

Stacey Lewis

City Lights Publishers

261 Columbus Ave

San Francisco  CA  94133

ph: 415 362 1901

fax: 415 362 4921

e: stacey@citylights.com

1.27.2010

Raymond Carver Reading Series At Syracuse University - Wed, Feb 3rd

On Wed, February 3rd, I'm bringing the GUD show to Syracuse University for their excellent Raymond Carver Reading Series. From what I understand, there's a class called "Living Writers" or something similar where they bring in writers who are...alive... and students are required to read their book. The author comes and answers their questions and gives a reading. I like this. I like that students are required to read GUD and that I'm alive to talk to them about it. If I had my way, I'd do this at a college every week. Thanks to the great SU for having me! Truly looking forward to it.

And you don't need to be a SU student to attend!

The free talk begins with a question-and-answer session at 3:45 p.m., and then my reading reading and book signing at 5:30 p.m. All events are held  in Gifford Auditorium in Huntington Beard Crouse Hall on the SU campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Here's a piece about the reading & series from Syracuse.com:

http://blog.syracuse.com/entertainment/2010/01/syracuse_university_lines_up_s.html

1.19.2010

My Review of Beats at Naropa

The new online issue of Rain Taxi features my review of Beats at Naropa:  An Anthology (Coffee House Press, 2009).  Here's a little taste:

"As paterfamilias of the school, Ginsberg gets his say throughout this collection, as does its presiding spirit Anne Waldman, who co-edited the book with librarian and Naropa alumna Laura Wright. Many other heavyweights of the Beat Generation also speak through its pages: William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others. However, it’s the lesser-known figures of the Beat scene that make this book a valuable addition to the library of Beat commentary."

You can read the whole review at: http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2009winter/naropa.shtml

1.15.2010

GUD at Southwest Texas Popular Culture Assoc. Conference

Every year a bunch of cool people who have combined their careers (mainly academic) with their passion for the Grateful Dead get together for a Grateful Dead conference at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, NM. This year one of the organizers asked if he could publish one of my "Outtakes" from GUD in their conference program. He found the Outtake at www.growingupdead.com (It's the "Dead Crazy Uncle" one). Since "Dead Crazy Uncle" was trimmed from the book, I'm especially pleased that it has found a home in the conference program. Da Capo Press also designed the below ad to go in the program. So although I won't be at the conference in body, I'll be there in spirit/word...

[View larger GUD ad here]

1.10.2010

WHS Final

I made a push this weekend to finish up the final mauscript version of White Hand Society. I always do a lot of revising as I write, so the manuscript was in pretty good shape. But it still needed a final thorough read-through to catch any last corrections. And, of course, there were plenty of those.

I'm happy to report that, as of this afternoon, the final draft of the manuscript is finished and has been emailed to City Lights. It's a great feeling knowing that the manuscript is out of my hands and moving forward to the next phase. Big thanks to my wife & kids for giving me plenty of space this weekend to get that work done. Onward...

1.2.2010

First Entry in 2010

Ready or not, 2010 is here! I just landed in this new decade with both feet flying & it's shaping up to be another interesting year for writing. Growing Up Dead continues to find its way in the world and in many ways, I feel like it has its own life outside of me. That's a good thing because my forthcoming book, White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg, is set for release in fall 2010. I'm working on a final draft of the book and then it's off to the next phase with my publisher City Lights leading the charge. I'll be sharing updates throughout the publication process and hope you'll come along for the trip. Even though White Hand Society will be taking up more time, that's not to say that Growing Up Dead is getting away from me... not by a longshot. In fact, there's a big GUD development on the horizon and I'm busting to share news about that too. But not just yet. 2010 has many days ahead. Hope to see you down the road...