Nancy Joyce Peters (born October 3, 1936) is an American publisher, writer, and co-owner with

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

City Lights Books City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected tit ...

and Publishers in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

until Ferlinghetti's 2021 death.

Biography

Nancy Peters was born in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, and took a BA in literature and an MLS at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

. After travel and life abroad between 1961 and 1967, she was briefly employed as a librarian at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

. In 1971 she moved to San Francisco and began working as an editor with City Lights.Morgan, Bill
"City Lights bookshop tour"
City Lights. Retrieved 7 August 2007. In addition to editorial work Peters was involved in coordinating collaborations with literary and community organizations sponsoring readings, performances, and benefits for progressive social action. Among the authors Peters worked with are

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

Harold Norse Harold Norse (July 6, 1916, New York City – June 8, 2009, San Francisco) was an American writer who created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse w ...

Diane di Prima Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934October 25, 2020) was an American poet, known for her association with the Beat movement. She was also an artist, prose writer, and teacher. Her magnum opus is widely considered to be ''Loba'', a collection of poem ...

Julian Beck Julian Beck (May 31, 1925 – September 14, 1985) was an American actor, stage director, poet, and painter. He is best known for co-founding and directing The Living Theatre, as well as his role as Reverend Henry Kane, the malevolent preacher i ...

, Andrei Vozsesnesky,

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activ ...

Andrei Codrescu Andrei Codrescu (; born December 20, 1946) is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He is the winner of the Peabody Award for his film ''Road Scholar'' and the Ovid Prize for p ...

Sam Shepard Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, screenwriter, and director whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any write ...

, Ron Kovic,

Ellen Ullman Ellen Ullman is an American computer programmer and author. She has written books, articles, and essays that analyze the human side of the world of computer programming. She has owned a consulting firm and worked as technology commentator for ...

Michael Parenti Michael John Parenti (born September 30, 1933) is an American political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at universities as well as run for political office. Parenti i ...

Peter Lamborn Wilson Peter Lamborn Wilson (October 20, 1945 – May 23, 2022) was an American anarchist author and poet, primarily known for his concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces which elude formal structures of control. During the 1970s, Wils ...

Rikki Ducornet Rikki Ducornet (; born Erica DeGre; April 19, 1943) is an American writer, poet, and artist. Her work has been described as “linguistically explosive and socially relevant,” and praised for “deploy ngtactics familiar to the historical avan ...

, and Alejandro Murguia. Peters helped City Lights avoid a financial crisis in the early 1980s, and become a co-owner of the business in 1984. She and Ferlinghetti bought the Columbus Avenue building that houses the bookstore in 1999. City Lights became a registered landmark in 2001, the first time this recognition had been granted to a cultural institution as well as a building. In the book ''Literary San Francisco'' (by Peters & Ferlinghetti), she wrote about the bohemian and radical Bay Area literary scene, from the beginnings through the early 20th century. Co-editor of ''Unamerican Activities: The Campaign against the Underground Press'', ''Howl on Trial'', and ''Reclaiming San Francisco'', she also edited ''Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination'' and a series of ''City Lights Reviews''. Among other journals, her writing has appeared in ''Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion'', '' Cultural Correspondence'', and ''The Beats: A Graphic History'' (Harvey Pekar). She is the translator of Antonio Tabucchi’s ''Dreams of Dreams'' and ''The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa'' and was a longtime member of the board of directors of the Istituto Italiano Scuola. In 2007, after 23 years as City Lights' executive director, Peters stepped down but remains on the board of directors and is president of City Lights Foundation. In 2010, she was given the Northern California Book Association’s Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement. Ferlinghetti praised her as "one of the best literary editors in the country." In 1978, she married the

Surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

–

Beat Generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...

poet

Philip Lamantia Philip Lamantia (October 23, 1927 – March 7, 2005) was an American poet and lecturer. His poems were often visionary, ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic, exploring the subconscious world of dreams and linking it to daily experiences, while so ...

(1927–2005), who lectured at the Art Institute and San Francisco State University. Peters participated with Lamantia in the World Surrealist Exhibition in Chicago in 1976, and they sometimes read together at such events as a benefit for Hopi and Navajo traditional peoples and the Santa Barbara Poetry Festival, and they recorded for the San Francisco Poetry Center Archives. Fourteen of her poems were published in a

Black Swan The black swan (''Cygnus atratus'') is a large waterbird, a species of swan which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. Within Australia, the black swan is nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent upon c ...

Press chapbook entitled ''It’s In the Wind''. Her poetry was included in ''Surrealist Women, An International Anthology''Rosemont, Penelope (1998)
"Surrealist Women"
University of Texas. Retrieved 7 August 2007. and in ''Anthologie des Poètes Surréalistes Américains''.

Notes and references

External links

at the landmark celebration.
Webcast from University of California
(listed at "2.15pm, 11 February 2006"). Needs Realplayer. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Peters, Nancy 1936 births Living people American publishers (people) American book editors American women writers Writers from Seattle 21st-century American women