Ken Babbs

Ken Babbs, Ohio-bred and Ohio-born, is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a member of two NCAA tournament basketball teams. He was turned on to writing at Miami by Walter Havighurst, a fine scholar and scribe.

He ttended graduate school at Stanford University, where he met Ken Kesey, Wendell Berry and other luminaries in Wallace Stegner’s writing class. Five years in the Marine Corps followed, serving as a helicopter pilot, with his final tour of duty in Vietnam. He got off the chopper and onto the bus, Further, for the famous trip to Madhattan in 1964, chronicled in print by Tom Wolfe and filmed and taped by the Merry Pranksters.

He shared forty-three years of collaboration and shenanigans with Kesey—doing shows, speaking engagements and musical catastrophes—plus writing books, magazine articles, and co-editing six issues of Spit in the Ocean. Babbs co-wrote Last Go Round with Kesey, and went on to publish a novel based on his experiences in Vietnam, Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

Married to a retired high school English teacher, he lives on a six-acre farm in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon.