Art Lester

I grew up reluctantly in Jacksonville, Florida, before working as a newspaper reporter, supermarket clown, fire tower operator, taxi driver and carnival worker. After dropping out of university, I ran a counter culture Mexican restaurant in Chapel Hill that hosted Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others. That was where I met the literary hero of my youth, Jack Kerouac.

During the eighties, I worked in Kenya, Botswana and the Dominican Republic, becoming a speaker of Swahili and Spanish. Since 1992 I have been minister to Unitarian congregations in London and Dublin. My publication credits are diverse, including the late Mike Shane Mystery Magazine and the BBC, among others. My book, Seeing with Your Ears, won a prestigious US self-published book competition, and a recent book, The Coffee Table Book of Doom (co-authored with the cartoonist Steven Appleby) was published by Random House in the UK and Penguin in the USA.

I divide my time between London and southern Spain with my wife, Gilly Fraser, a television script writer and former playwright in residence of the Royal Court Theatre.