Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti was an American poet, painter, social activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. He was the author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration. Ferlinghetti was best known for his first collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages, with sales of more than one million copies. When Ferlinghetti turned 100 in March 2019, the city of San Francisco proclaimed his birthday, March 24, "Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day".