M. W. Jacobs

M.W. Jacobs is the author of “San Fran ‘60s: Stories of the Hippies, the Summer of Love, & San Francisco in the Sixties, Volumes 1 & 2.” This hundred-and-twenty-two-thousand word collection of auto- biographical short stories is the only literary fiction by a participant. For all the memoirs and histories, nobody, not once, told what it was like from the inside using the techniques of literary fiction. Until “San Fran ‘60s.” For the fiftieth anniversary this year of the Summer of Love, “San Fran '60s” and "More San Fran '60s" have been combined in this new volume. Plus a new story has been added that has not previously appeared anywhere, “The Land,” the longest in the collection. Jacobs’ previous book, "A History of the U.S. in 20 Movies: an All-Movie History Course," required the rare combination of exhaustive knowledge of American history and expertise in film history and production. He acquired the latter when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited a feature film (available on You Tube as "Twisted Tales from Edgar Allan Poe"). It was low budget and independently produced during the advent of the home video market in the early Eighties. In the late Eighties, Jacobs worked for George Lucas' special effects division, Industrial Light and Magic. Then he became a history teacher, and for nearly twenty years, he searched for the most effective way to teach the subject that polls perennially rank as students' least favorite. "A History of the U.S. in 20 Movies: an All-Movie History Course" is the result of that search. Also for Escallonia Press, Jacobs compiled and edited “Choicest Rock Band Names as Tiny Poems” (2012). From thousands collected over decades throughout the Anglophone world, these are the choicest few hundred. A Darwinian welter of tens of thousands of rock bands desperate for attention has created some remarkable band names, a tiny percentage of which qualify as "found poetry." Jacobs’ translation of Mexico's national poet, “Poems, Ramón López Velarde” (2014), and also his translation “Collected Poems of José Gororstiza” (2017) were both jointly published by Berkeley and Floricanto Presses.