Ann Charters received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her first book, Nobody: A Story of Bert Williams, was a biography of the West Indian comedian Bert Williams, an early eminent Black entertainer on the American stage. In 1973, she published the first biography of Jack Kerouac after working with him on his bibliography. She went on to edit the Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader, and The Portable Beat Reader, among other anthologies of Beat literature. Her photographs have appeared in Beats & Company and Blues Faces. Since 1985 she has been the editor of The Story and Its Writer. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Connecticut.