Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the cofounder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, fiction, plays, art criticism, and film narrations, he is famous for his best-selling book A Coney Island of the Mind (New Directions, New York 1958), a collection of poems which has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over one million copies. He has given various exhibitions of his painting in USA and Italy. He still lives in San Francisco, and one of the roads in town has been called after his name.