The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen where authors give exclusive readings from their work.
A.D. Winans was born and grew up in San Francisco, but really grew up in the jungles of Panama, where he served in an elite military unit, seeing first-hand the government tyranny waged against the poor and oppressed. He returned to San Francisco in 1958 to become part of the North Beach Beat movement and participated in the post-Beat and Hippie era. He was a close friend of Charles Bukowski, Bob Kaufman, and Jack Micheline. He worked for five years at the San Francisco Art Commission and published
Second Coming Press for seventeen years. In 2002, a song poem of his was performed at Alice Tully Hall in NYC. In 2006 he won a PEN Josephine Miles Award for excellence in Literature. In 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014 he was a recipient of a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing. He worked at a variety of jobs, retiring in 1995 as an Equal Opportunity Specialist, investigating discrimination against minorities, women and the disabled. His latest book,
Dead Lions, published by
Punk Hostage Press, is a memoir on his friendship with Bukowski, Kaufman, Micheline, and Alvah Bessie, one of the original Hollywood Ten who went to prison for refusing to cooperate with the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee.
