Jan Kerouac

Jan Kerouac was born in 1952 in Albany, New York from parents Joan and Jack Kerouac. Raised on the Lower East Side of New York City, she traveled extensively in Mexico and South America in her teenage years and early twenties. Returning to live near her mother Joan Haverty Stuart in Washington State in the late 1970's, she completed her first novel BABY DRIVER (originally published in 1981). Later, she would work on her second novel TRAIN SONG (originally published in 1988). She published widely and presented at symposiums on the Beat writers, including the Amsterdam Poetry Festival in 1983, the ON THE ROAD celebration at the Naropa University in 1982 and the dedication of the Jack Kerouac Memorial in Lowell in 1988. She was a featured speaker at the international Beat Generation conference at NYU in May,1994. With her health at risk after a kidney failed while she was in Puerto Rico, she partnered with musical guests for a two-night event in San Francisco, Summer of 1995 that might raise funds for a transplant. In 1996, she died of kidney failure in Albuquerque, New Mexico.