Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born Lawrence Monsanto Ferling in Yonkers, New York on March 24, 1919. He received a B. A. from the University of North Carolina, a M. A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D from the Sorbonne. During World War II, he served in the U. S. Naval Reserve and was sent to Nagasaki shortly after it was bombed.
In 1953, he and Peter Martin began to publish City Lights magazine. They also opened the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to help support the magazine. In 1955, they launched City Light Publishing, which became known as the heart of the "Beat" movement. Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry including Time of Useful Consciousness, Poetry as Insurgent Art, How to Paint Sunlight, A Far Rockaway of the Heart, Over All the Obscene Boundaries: European Poems and Transitions, Who Are We Now?, The Secret Meaning of Things, and A Coney Island of the Mind. He is also the author of more than eight plays and of the novels Love in the Days of Rage and Her. He has translated the work of a number of poets including Nicanor Parra, Jacques Prevert, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
He received the lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000, the Frost Medal in 2003, and the Literarian Award in 2005, presented for "outstanding service to the American literary community." He was named the first poet laureate of San Francisco in 1998. He writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle.
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