Lowell, Mass., set to hold Jack Kerouac Literary Festival featuring tours, well-known writers

Mass. city to hold expanded Jack Kerouac festival

LOWELL, Mass. — A Massachusetts city is set to hold an expanded version of its annual festival celebrating its most famous writer — Jack Kerouac (KEHR’-oo-ak).

The Beat Generation icon was born in Lowell, a city of about 100,000 residents a 40-minute drive northwest of Boston.

The four-day event honoring Kerouac is sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Inc., a nonprofit organization founded in 1985 to promote a better understanding and appreciation of his life and literature.

The event begins Thursday and will feature tours of places Kerouac frequented and wrote about. It also will highlight readings by best-selling writers including Anita Shreve and Russell Banks.

This is the 22nd Jack Kerouac Literary Festival.

Kerouac published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, most famously “On the Road.” He died in 1969.