Ken Kesey was an American author best known for his novel 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. He was born in 1935 in La Junta, Colorado and grew up in Oregon. He attended the University of Oregon, where he studied creative writing and received his degree in 1957. Kesey wrote several novels, including Sometimes a Great Notion, and was a major figure in the 1960s counterculture movement. He died in 2001 at the age of 66.