Note: Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, has taught courses in the short story for over thirty years. A preeminent authority on the Beat writers, Charters has written a critically acclaimed biography of Jack Kerouac; compiled "Beats & Company", a collection of her own photographs of Beat writers; and edited the best-selling "Portable Beat Reader". Her published books include "The Kerouac Reader", "Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac, 1957-1969", "Beat Down to Your Soul", and "The Portable Sixties Reader". Her other textbooks with Bedford/St. Martin's include "The American Short Story and Its Writer", and "Literature and Its Writers" (co-edited with Samuel Charters).