Press Releases

Naropa Begins “On the Road” 50 th Anniversary Celebration with Video Project
Kerouac Festival will anchor this year’s Summer Writing Program

BOULDER , Colo. (January 17, 2007)—This summer, Naropa University will celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” with a Kerouac Festival featuring a marathon reading of the novel, musical performance, film presentations and more to be planned.

“Allen Ginsberg and I named the poetics program at Naropa after the brilliant and original work and ‘mind’ of Kerouac,” says Beat poet legend Anne Waldman. “His work is taught at Naropa and the pedagogy of our school is part of the ‘Outrider’ tradition, exemplified by the Beats.”

The Kerouac Festival will occur between the second and third weeks of the famous annual Summer Writing Program at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, but the life of the festival begins now.

Leading up to the festival, the Kerouac School will be collaborating on a film project with the University of Colorado Film Studies Department and artists and admirers of Jack Kerouac in key locations featured in “On the Road.” The school will send a digital video camera to contemporary artists throughout North America – filmmakers, visual artists, poets, prose writers – asking them to create a new video interpretation of Kerouac’s defining work through their singular perspectives.

According to Junior Burke, chair of Naropa’s Writing and Poetics Department, the film will be “concerned much more with the present than the past: Where is the contemporary curiosity and energy? What's bubbling underneath the mall-ification of America?”

The camera will travel between New York, San Francisco, Lowell, Mass., Denver, Iowa and Mexico City. World-renowned poet, activist and regular Summer Writing Program teacher Amiri Baraka has already signed on to take part in the project, as has Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the most influential poets of the Beat movement.

Additionally, festival organizers, Naropa friends and family, will be blogging throughout the year, sharing news of Kerouac celebrations around the world, updates about the Kerouac Festival and perspectives of special guest bloggers . The blog and more information on the festival can be found at http://www.naropa.edu/kerouac.

Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Naropa University is a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian liberal arts institution dedicated to advancing contemplative education. This approach to learning integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions, helping students know themselves more deeply and engage constructively with others. The university comprises a four-year undergraduate college and graduate programs in the arts, education, environmental leadership, psychology and religious studies.

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Contact:

Jane Rubinstein
Director, Marketing & Communications
Naropa University
PH 303-245-4643
FAX 303-245-4676
Jrubinstein@naropa.edu