Kesey, Ken Elton (1935–2001)

US writer. He used his experience of working in a mental hospital as the basis for his best-selling first novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962; filmed 1975). This was followed by his Oregon-set novel Sometimes a Great Notion (1964). In the mid-1960s he gave up writing and became one of the leaders of the hippie movement.

He returned to writing with Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) and Demon Box (1988), collections of less energetic, sometimes folksy material. Last Go Round was published in 1994. Kesey's life as a hippie was described by Tom Wolfe in his Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.