Paul Maher is the author of Kerouac: The Definitive Biography, and the editor of the critically acclaimed collection Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac . One of today's top Kerouac scholars, Maher graduated from the University of Massachusetts and is completing advanced degrees in the field of English while working as a book critic for the Toronto Star. He served as the editor of the Kerouac Quarterly and has been hailed by historian Douglas Brinkley as "one of the new leaders" of Kerouac scholarship During the seven years of research Maher undertook to complete Kerouac, he drew from the same ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds as the Beat writer. Having been raised within the Centralville enclave of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, during much of his youth, Maher lived a stone's throw from two of Kerouac's boyhood homes (on Hildreth Street). Armed with his insider's understanding of Kerouac's childhood world, Maher then integrated a vigorous and exhaustive search to unlock Kerouac's private universe utlizing perceptive readings of his writings, scouring Kerouac's personal letters and reading all of his available journals and notebooks (as well as numerous other unpublished materials stored in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, as well as other various institutions). Maher is currently researching and writing a biography of Henry David Thoreau, an authorized biography of composer/performer David Amram, and editing a collection of interviews with Miles Davis. Paul Maher lives in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.