About Neeli Cherkovski Books
Neeli Cherkovski (July 1, 1945-March 19, 2024) was an American poet and memoirist. Born Nelson Cherry, he grew up in Los Angeles, where as a teen he began publishing poems and was befriended by Charles Bukowski, with whom he edited the poetry zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. In the 1970s, he was a political consultant in the Riverside area, moving to San Francisco in 1974 to work for then-State Senator George Moscone. In San Francisco, he came out as gay, reclaimed his family's historical name, and became a major figure in the North Beach literary community. In the 1990s, he became a writer-in-residence at the New College of California, teaching literature and philosophy there until it closed in 2008.
