About

Leek Loves Books 2025

The Mystery of Academia

Born in Buxton and living in Leek since 2014, Oliver Harris has published some twenty books and many articles about American Literature and film. His work focuses on the Beat Generation, and in 2010 he was the founding President of the European Beat Studies Network. In 2023, he was the literary adviser to Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig for their adaptation of William Burroughs’ novel Queer, and co-authored Two Assassins: William Burroughs/Hassan Sabbah with the Iranian writer Farid Ghadami. In 2024, he published One Shot: A Beat Generation Mystery, a hybrid of detective fiction, scholarship and memoir and, after a 30-year career at Keele University, became Professor Emeritus of American Literature.