George Leite

Who is George Leite?

George Leite was an American author, poet, publisher and bookstore owner active in California's San Francisco Bay Area in the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1920, he was raised in the then Portuguese-American enclave of San Leandro, California and died in 1985 in Walnut Creek, California.

Leite was the founder of daliel's Bookstore on the 2400 block of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, where he published Circle Magazine and published books, pamphlets, and audio recordings under the Circle Editions imprint. Many of the important regional writers of the period such as Kenneth Rexroth were published by him, and his store was the site of concerts by composer Harry Partch and exhibitions by artist Jean Varda. He lived for a while near Henry Miller's cabin on the Big Sur coast.