Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) was an American novelist born in La Junta, Colorado, who grew up in Oregon and spent much of his life there. He studied at the University of Oregon and then at Stanford, where he took part in early experiments with psychoactive drugs and worked as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital. These experiences fed his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which made him famous in his twenties. His second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, is a large family story set among Oregon loggers. In the 1960s Kesey became a leading figure of the counterculture, gathering a group known as the Merry Pranksters and travelling the country in a painted bus. Later he wrote essays, stories, children's tales and a further novel, and he farmed in Oregon. He matters for his bold, vivid voice and for his questions about authority, sanity and individual freedom.