A constant figure in New York City’s underground scene from the ‘60’s onward, Jim Carroll was an accomplished poet, autobiographer, and musician who achieved fame for his seminal 1978 memoir The Basketball Diaries and for his work with the influential punk outfit The Jim Carroll Band.

Born in Manhattan in 1948, Carroll spent much of his childhood and adolescent years developing his talents as a writer. Influenced heavily by Beat generation figures such as William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, Carroll developed his distinctive style of writing at a young age, playing with both poetry and prose and constantly chronicling his experiences in his diary.

Attending the elite Trinity School in central Manhattan, Carroll balanced his writing with another hobby, basketball, a sport at which he excelled. The Basketball Diaries chronicles this period and the decline of his basketball career as a result of his heroin addiction, which began at age 13.

While still in high school, Carroll published his first collection of poetry, Organic Trains. These poems earned him recognition by major literary magazines, and in 1973, at age 24, Carroll released Living At The Movies, his first publication by a mainstream publisher. During the time in between, he found work doing odd jobs for several prominent New York artists such as Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Larry Rivers, all the while nursing his growing heroin addiction. This period would be chronicled in his second memoir, Forced Entries, published in 1987.

In 1978, having finally kicked his addiction, Carroll moved to California, where he started The Jim Carroll Band, a punk/poetry infusion, at the encouragement of close friend Patti Smith. The band released their debut album, Catholic Boy, in 1980 along with the lead single “People Who Died,” which would become an unexpected hit.

Jim Carroll remained a prolific and influential poet and musician until his death by heart attack on September 11, 2009. His first and only novel, The Petting Zoo, would be released the following year.