About the Author
In the mid-80s, Peter Conners submerged into a life of writing, music, and exploration, and he hasn’t looked back since. He has published nine books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, and edited dozens of volumes of poetry and prose. His nonfiction books – Cornell ‘77, Growing Up Dead, JAMerica, and White Hand Society — have garnered him a reputation as a leading chronicler of the Grateful Dead, jam band, and countercultural community. In 2017, his book, Cornell ‘77: The Music, Myth and Magnificence of the Grateful Dead’s Concert at Barton Hall, was included in the Grammy-nominated Grateful Dead box set, May 1977: Get Shown the Light, released by Rhino Records in May 2017. In 2022, his debut novel, Merch Table Blues, and his first prose poetry collection in a decade, Beyond the Edge of Suffering, were both published.
Peter’s Books
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Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead
“The hardest part of being the Grateful Dead’s publicist was convincing the media that Deadheads were diverse, thoughtful, and not infrequently accomplished. If I’d just had a copy of Growing Up Dead, I could have simply handed it out. The Deadhead subculture was rich and fascinating, and this book is a terrific documentation of it.” — Dennis McNally, Publicist for the Grateful Dead, author of A Long Strange Trip
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JAMerica: the history of the jam band and festival scene
“Jamerica is a Behind the Music styled treatise devoted to American jam music and its prolific purveyors. Author Peter Conners hits on all pertinent bands and festivals of the virtuosic neo-hippie movement, kicking up intriguing points like a patchouli-scented undergrad shoeing a Hacky Sack outside the student union. When strung together like Christmas lights, these insightful, entertaining tidbits and musical memories instill a sense that the reader is amongst friends." — Houston Press
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Beyond The Edge of Suffering
"What you know after reading only a handful of these poems is that they have the ease, and share the privileges, of being loved and cared for by a master — not as common a thing in American poetry as you might think. This is an end-of-days story for precisely our times, presented formally in a fluid blending of at least three distinct genres, managing to celebrate them all to rich effects. These poems capture a litany of almost microscopic moments, resolute in how they are illustrative of our stunningly particular days. I love this book and I want you to read it if you care about looking closely at who we are by looking at who we have been.” — Bruce Weigl
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White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg
"Through the years City Lights has brought us seminal work by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and now, this detail-rich double bio of Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary. I knew both these men pretty well, and the times intimately, and Peter Conners has been true to it all. I don't know how he amassed the trunks of data he must have used to find the jillions of details which were new to me, but I'm certainly glad that he did. This book wins a well deserved spot on my shelf, and belongs with anyone who wants an intimate view of the Sixties-Seventies spinning of the Great Wheel of the Dharma." — Peter Coyote, actor/author, Sleeping Where I Fall
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Cornell 77: The Music, The Myth, and the Magnificence of the Grateful Dead's Concert at Barton Hall
"For years, fans and critics have raved about the Grateful Dead's concert at Cornell's Barton Hall on May 8, 1977. Yet for all of the accolades, this celebrated show has never been fully explored and explained― until now. Peter Conners tells the story of this remarkable event with zeal and precision, teasing out the magic from the myth and showing how this night became a legend." — Nicholas Meriwether, Director, Center for Counterculture Studies
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Merch Table Blues
"It's almost like Huck Finn went right by the raft and got on the bus instead." — Brian Weinstein, ‘Attendance Bias’ podcast
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The Crows Were Laughing In Their Trees