Ed Sanders is a poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, novelist and publisher who was born August 17, 1939 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ed Sanders dropped out of Missouri University in 1958 and hitchhiked to New York City’s Greenwich Village. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and the Hippie generations.

He wrote his first major poem (Poem from Jail) on toilet paper in his cell after being jailed for protesting against nuclear proliferation in 1961.

In 1962, he founded the avant-garde journal, Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. Sanders opened the Peace Eye Bookstore (147 Avenue A in what was then the Lower East Side) which became a gathering place for bohemians and radicals.

Sanders graduated from New York University in 1964, with a degree in Classics.

In 1965, he founded the Fugs with Tuli Kupferberg . The band broke up in 1969 and reformed in 1984.

In 1971, Sanders wrote The Family, a profile of the events leading up to the Tate-LaBianca murders . He obtained access to the "Manson Family" by posing as a "Satanic guru-maniac and dope-trapped psychopath."

Sanders currently lives in Woodstock, New York where he publishes the Woodstock Journal with his wife of over 36 years, the writer and painter Miriam R. Sanders .

He also invents musical instruments such as the Talking Tie, the microtonal Microlyre and the Lisa Lyre, a musical contraption involving light-activated switches and the Mona Lisa painting.

Selected Bibliography

• Poem from Jail (1963)
• Peace Eye (1966)
• The Family: The Manson Group and Aftermath (1971, New Edition, 1990)
• Egyptian Hieroglyphics (1973)
• Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volume 1 (1975)
• Investigative Poetry (1976)
• 20,OOO A.D. (1976)
• Fame & Love in New York (1980)
• The Z-D Generation (1981)
• The Cutting Prow (1983)
• Hymn to Maple Syrup & Other Poems (1985)
• Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Selected Poems 1961-1985 (1987)
• Poems for Robin (1987)
• Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volumes 1 & 2 (1990)
• Hymn to the Rebel Cafe (1993)
• Chekhov (1995)
• 1968: A History in Verse (1997)
• America, A History in Verse, Vol. 1 (1900-1939) 2000
• The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg 2000
• America, A History in Verse, Vol. 2 (1940-1961) 2001
• American, A History in Verse, Vol. 3 (1962-1970) 2004

Selected Solo Discography

• Sanders' Truckstop 1969
• Beer Cans on the Moon 1972
• Yiddish-speaking socialist of the Lower East Side 1991
• Songs in ancient Greek 1992
• American Bard 1996

Sanders' discography with the Fugs can be found here