Sam Kashner

His new memoir is called When I was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School. As a teenager, Kashner left his comfortable suburban life on Long Island, N.Y. and became the first student to attend the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colo. Kasher's teachers were the great beat writers William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Kerouac. Kashner is also the author of a novel, Sinatraland, as well as three non-fiction books. He is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.