James Dalessandro

JAMES DALESSANDO, was the co-founder of the Santa Cruz Poetry
Festival, the nation’s largest literary event for four years and
which brought together Ken Kesey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles
Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Bob Kaufman and musicians
like Charles Lloyd and Anthony Braxton. He has published four
books: poetry in Canary In A Coal Mine, the highly acclaimed San
Francisco murder mystery Bohemian Heart (St. Martin’s Press),
true crime (Citizen Jane), and his new novel, 1906, an epic
recreation of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. He is
a 20-year veteran of the Writer’s Guild of America, West, and has
written the screenplays for all three of his books, including
1906, which was sold to Warner Brothers after a heated Hollywood
bidding war. He is currently writer and co-director, with
four-time Oscar winner Ben Burtt, of The Damnedest Finest Ruins,
a feature documentary about the 1906 earthquake. He is also
co-executive producer and screenwriter of Citizen Jane for Wolper
Productions and Court TV, producer and co-writer, with Lidia
Fraser, of Draconin, a trilogy of novels and animated feature
films. He teaches the longest-running screenwriting course in San
Francisco and served as the writer for the award-winning House of
Blues Radio Hour. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.