(born March 12, 1922, Lowell, Mass., U.S.—died Oct. 21, 1969, St. Petersburg, Fla.) U.S. poet and novelist. He was born to a French Canadian family and attended Columbia University, where he met Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and others who would become part of the Beat movement, a term Kerouac coined. Kerouac served as a merchant seaman and roamed the U.S. and Mexico before his first book, The Town & the City (1950), was published. On the Road (1957), his best-known novel and the first he wrote in the spontaneous style that he advocated, enjoyed huge success among young readers, for whom Kerouac became a romantic hero. All his works, including The Dharma Bums (1958), The Subterraneans (1958), and Desolation Angels (1965), are autobiographical. Alcoholism contributed to his death at age 47.

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