The Velvets and the Underground 1960-1970

Join writers Lucy Sante and Gillian McCain for a deep dive into the countercultural explosion that reshaped American art, music, and literature. Sante, legendary chronicler of New York’s urban underbelly, joins McCain, co-author of the definitive oral history of punk Please Kill Me, to examine the seismic impact of The Velvet Underground and the downtown scene they inhabited. Together, they will trace the lineage of the 1960s underground, exploring how raw noise, avant-garde experimentation, street-level poetry, and radical subcultures collided to forever transform the cultural landscape.

Gillian McCain is the co-author of two books with Legs McNeil: Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk and Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose. She is also the author of three books of poetry: Tilt, Religion, and with Jeffrey Conway and David Trinidad, Descent of the Dolls. She is the former Program Coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and served on the Board for over two decades.