Growing Up Underground A Memoir of Counterculture New York

Award-winning designer and writer Steven Heller comes of age at the center of New York's youth culture in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

Steven Heller has written a memoir. This is no chronological trek through the hills and valleys of his comparatively "normal" life, but instead, a coming of age tale whereby with luck and circumstance, he found himself in certain curious places at critical times during the early to late 1960s and later throughout the 80s in New York City.

This story is both entertaining and enlightening and follows Heller between the ages of 16 and 23 as he solidified his work as art director, graphic designer, cartoonist and writer, through stints at the New York Review of Books, Sex, Screw, and The New York Free Press, until becoming the youngest art director (and occasional illustrator) for The New York Times OpEd page at age 23.

Steven Heller was an art director at the New York Times for 33 years, originally on the OpEd Page and for almost thirty of those years with the New York Times Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the SVA/NYC MFA Designer as Entrepreneur Department, is the author and co-author of 200 books on graphic design, satiric art and illustration, and writes "The Daily Heller" column for Printmag.com. He lives in New York City.