Writer, critic, educator. Stan Persky was born in Chicago on January 19, 1941. Persky’s writing focuses on aesthetics and culture, metaphysics/anti-metaphysics, political philosophy, homosexuality, and censorship. Persky received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from the University of British Columbia. He has taught at Northwest College, Malaspina College, Capilano University, and Simon Fraser University. He is the author of numerous books, including On Kiddie Porn (with John Dixon, 2001), which won the Donner Prize for Best Canadian Book on Public Policy, and The Short Version, which won the British Columbia Book Prize for non-fiction (2006). Persky is the editor of two Supreme Court of Canada decisions, Decision on Abortion (1988) and Delgamuukw (1998), and has worked as a media commentator for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a literary columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun, and writer for Saturday Night, The Tyee, dooneyscafe.com, and other journals.
As a teenager, Persky was inspired to pursue a literary career after being introduced to Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. After serving in the United States Navy, Perksy moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s where he became part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a group of writers that included Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, George Stanley, and Robin Blaser. He came to Vancouver in 1966 with Blaser, where Persky became a civic activist and journalist. During the 1970s and 1980s, he figured prominently in the rise of British Columbian writing and publishing, co-founding the Georgia Straight Writing Supplements which led to the formation of the Vancouver publishing house, New Star Books. Persky currently shares his time between Vancouver and Berlin.
Discrete project sites documenting the work of specific artists and collectives in detail.
Essays and conversation providing a context for exploring the Project Sites and Archives.
Video interviews conducted between December 2008 and May 2009 reflecting on Vancouver’s art scene in the sixties.