Stan Persky born 19 January 1941Stan Persky is a naturalised Canadian poet, writer, media commentator and philosophy lecturer.
Persky was born in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager, he made contact with and received encouragement from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and other writers of the Beat Generation. Persky served in the United States Navy, and then settled in San Francisco, California in the early 1960s, becoming part of a group of writers that included Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser and George Stanley - known as the San Francisco Renaissance.
In 1966, Persky moved to Vancouver, Canada, and attended the University of British Columbia, receiving degrees in anthropology and sociology. He became a Canadian citizen in 1972. During the 1960s and '70s, he was prominent as a student and civic activist and journalist.
After university, Persky worked at Vancouver Mental Patients Association and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before becoming a college lecturer in the sociology department at Northwest College in Terrace, British Columbia. He has subsequently taught political studies and philosophy in various Canadian universities. Since 1990, in addition to living in Vancouver, he has resided part-time in Berlin, Germany.
He worked as a media commentator for the CBC, a literary columnist for The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun, and has written for various magazines, journals and periodicals. Stan Persky is a long-time Vancouver public intellectual and literary activist.
Stan Persky's website