Climax to William Burroughs 100th Anniversary
As the climax of international events to mark the 100th anniversary of William Burroughs, in New York last week Professor Oliver Harris, American Studies, participated in three major events.
On April 23, he joined a line-up of New York poets and performers at the famous St Marks Poetry Project, giving a reading from Burroughs' letters to an audience of several hundred.
On April 26 he made two contributions to the Burroughs Centennial Conference at the City University of New York, engaging in a conversation with Burroughs' most recent biographer, the Beat expert Barry Miles, before delivering the conference keynote address.
Also that day Professor Harris joined with archivists from Columbia University and the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, delivering a presentation focused on the role of the archive in the re-editing of Burroughs' experimental trilogy, The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded - which were published on April 22 by Grove Press in the US and by Penguin in the UK.