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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Author Biography

Ken Kesey was born in 1935 in LaJunta, Colorado. The family moved to Springfield, Oregon, where he attended public school before attending and graduating from the University of Oregon. While in college, he pursued drama and athletics. A champion wrestler, he nearly won a place on the U.S. Olympic team. After graduating, he worked for a year, thought about becoming a movie actor, and wrote an unpublished novel about college athletics entitled "End of Autumn." Kesey married his high school sweetheart, Faye Haxy, in 1956, and the couple became the parents of three children. In 1958, Kesey began graduate work in creative writing at Stanford University in California, where he studied with several noted writers, including novelist Wallace Stegner. He wrote a second unpublished novel, "Zoo," before beginning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the summer of 1960. Around this time, he became a paid volunteer in government-sponsored drug...
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