To celebrate the 100th birthday of Americas most audacious writer William S Burroughs Chicago Humanities Festival brings together a motley crew of poets writers and musicians William Seward Burroughs 1914 1997 was an American writer and visual artist He was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature Burroughss needs took him across the United States down into Mexico to Europe and beyond On his travels he meets up with various members of the underground drug and outcast cultures