October 1, 2007
Alicia Bay Laurel
Author - Composer - Performer



Alicia on her 2007 Japan Tour
Alicia Bay Laurel currently tours as a singer/songwriter/guitarist with three
critically acclaimed, self-produced CDs, one psych folk, one world
(Hawaiian), and one jazz/blues. She also wrote, illustrated and designed
Living on the Earth, a boho sustainable living guide that, in Spring
1971, was the first paperback book on the New York Times Bestseller List,
and launched a graphic art and drawing style that is still widely emulated
to this day.
Click HERE for Alicia's website

October 15, 2007
East Coast author Alexandra Enders
And Photographer/Filmmaker Christopher Felver


Alexandra Enders will read from her new novel, "Bride Island." She has published short stories in BOMB Magazine, Hunger Mountain, and Critical Quarterly and was a finalist for the Rolex Mentor/Protegé Program with Toni Morrison. Her novel "Bride Island" has just been published.

"Enders writes with such bone-deep honesty we know from the opening pages that it is winner take all.” - Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of "The Deep End of The Ocean."
"Bride Island is a strong and beautiful book, full of the power and beauty of the Maine coast and the power and beauty of the family. Enders has a compelling voice, a meticulously observant eye and a deep understanding of the world of emotional engagement. This is an impressive debut." —Roxana Robinson, author of "Sweetwater" and "This is My Daughter."

Alexandra Enders was born in Boston, MA and grew up in Cambridge, London, and New York City. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College and worked in New York as a magazine editor and writer before getting an MFA in Writing from Vermont College in 2000. She has published stories in BOMB, Hunger Mountain, and Critical Quarterly, and was a finalist in the inaugural cycle of the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative in 2002. Bride Island is her first novel. She lives in New York and Maine with her husband, daughter, and dachshund.
Click here for more information about Alexandra Enders.


Chris Felver will screen a few short films and talk about his book, "Beat". For over three decades, photographer and filmmaker Felver has documented outstanding figures of the Beat Generation, the mid-twentieth century writers and artists whose work shared themes of spirituality, environmental awareness, and political dissidence. Fifty years ago, the historic publication of Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road" heralded a new direction for post-WWII American culture. In poetry, art, and music, these movers and shakers captured the world’s imagination, and are now regarded as significant artists, outliving the catchall label, “Beat Generation.” A collection of images, text, ephemera, artifacts, and reminiscence, "Beat" celebrates the creative spirit and joyous antics of this extraordinary group. The personalities that defined this new sensibility, ushered in by Allen Ginsberg’s 1955 San Francisco reading of his poem “Howl,” are all present in "Beat," with contributions by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, David Amram, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, and Diane di Prima.
Click here for more information about Christopher Felver

The Odd Monday Series is Project of The Noe Valley Ministry
www.oddmondays.com

October 29, 2007
Luciano Chessa, Sardinian Composer, and films by Bruce Baillie

(Regretfully, Nigerian-American poet Uchechi Kalu, author of "Flowers Blooming Against A Bruised Grey Sky,"
had to cancel due to ill health. )


As a composer, pianist, musical saw and Vietnamese dan bau soloist, and ensemble artist, Luciano Chessa has performed largely in the U.S. and in Europe. His first recording, Humus (1997) received outstanding reviews in all the major Italian musical magazines ("Fare Musica", "Rumore") and was voted by Rockerilla's critics as one of the 10 best Italian recordings of 1997.
Chessa received his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California, Davis. Previously, at the Conservatory of Bologna, he earned a D.M.A. in piano and a M.A. in composition. His areas of research interest include 20th-century music, experimental music, and late 14th-century music, and he has been interviewed at the CBS (KPIX/KBHK) television channel as an expert on Italian hip-hop. His scholarly writings can be found in Musica e Storia, the Journal of the Levi Foundation, Venice, and the Festschrifts for Max Seidel, published by Marsilio, among others. Dr. Chessa is also active as a composer and performer. Five of his scores (including a large work for orchestra and double children choir, and a piano and three turntables duo) have just been published by RAI TRADE, and distributed in the U.S. by The Theodore Presser Company. Since 1999 he has been musical program coordinator for the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco, where he produces concerts of Italian contemporary music.
click here for more information

Bruce Baillie is the founder of Canyon Cinema and a genius of the avant garde genre. We will screen his first film, "On Sundays" (1960), as well as "All My Life" and "An Introduction To The Holy Scrolls." Bruce will make a rare visit to the Bay Area later in the week to MC two nights of Canyon Cinema films. One of the early members of the San Francisco Avant Garde film movement, his works are in the Library of Congress and are considered national treasures.
For more information about the performances: http://www.canyoncinema.com
click here for more information about Bruce Baillie


click here for more information