Roger Keen is an English film-maker and writer. He spent nearly 30 years working for companies like the BBC and ITV making television dramas, documentaries, news and consumer programmes. Since 2006 he has concentrated on his writing and his novelistic memoir ‘The Mad Artist – Psychonautic Adventures from the 1970s’ was published in 2010.
Set between 1975 and 1979, The Mad Artist explores Roger’s experiences of psychedelic awakenings – the trials and tribulations – against the backdrop of his time at art college. The novel manages to combine the best elements of biography and literary flair and carves for itself an exhilarating picture of psychedelic Britain in the late 1970s. To read more about The Mad Artist please visit PsypressUK’s literary review of the book.
Understanding drug literature as a genre is important in coming to know how the spread of ideas contained within the texts has disseminated through society. With this in mind PsypressUK asked Roger what the major psy-literary influences have been on him: “As with so many other people, the first work of psy-lit to make a big impact on me was The Doors of Perception, which I read in my late teens. Aldous Huxley was already familiar to me as a novelist and his literary skill made the psychedelic experience come alive on the page and captivate my imagination.”...
