Basil King:  born in London, England before World War 2, has been painting for over seven decades and writing since 1985.  He does both in Brooklyn where he has lived since 1969.  He has published ten poetry collections, some dozen chapbooks and completed several thousand works of visual art in oils, inks, pastels, and mixed media.  His art and his poetry are most recently celebrated in the special limited edition After Thought from Granary Books, 2022.  See www.basilking.net

George Schneeman:  was born on March 11, 1934 in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He received a B.A. in Philosophy and English Literature from St. Mary’s College, and then graduate work in English Literature at the University of Minnesota.  On his move to New York City, he immediately became part of a group of poets centered around the St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and began to work extensively with them, painting many portraits, producing flyers for their readings, covers for their books and collaborating with them extensively.  He collaborated on hundreds of pieces of art with, amongst others, Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, Larry Fagin, Michael Brownstein, and Alice Notley.  He died of heart failure on January 27, 2009.  In a real and deep sense, he was an integral part of a historical moment taking place on the Lower East Side before gentrification.  Painting, playing poker till dawn and boiling up pots of midnight pasta for friends in his apartment in an East Village tenement, he was sometimes described as New York’s last bohemian.