James Grauerholz

James Grauerholz was a writer, editor, musician, and for decades served as the literary executor of the late William S. Burroughs. Grauerholz was born in Coffeyville, Kansas in 1953 and briefly attended the University of Kansas before dropping out in the early 1970s. Already fascinated by the Beat Generation when he left Kansas for New York City, Grauerholz befriended Allen Ginsberg, who recommended him as an assistant to Burroughs. Over the years Grauerholz developed into a close friend of Burroughs’s and functioned as his manager until the latter’s death in 1997. Grauerholz helped edit several of Burroughs’s books, a collection of his journals entitled Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs, as well as Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader. In 2023 his book The Death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs: What Really Happened? was published by Moloko Press. He died on January 1, 2026.