Dalessandro wrote the teleplay and served as one of the films producers. In September 2009, the Hallmark Channel aired “Citizen Jane,” a film about the story of Jane Alexander, a Marin County, California woman who spent 13 years tracking down and helping to convict the man who murdered her 88-year-old aunt. The documentary was picked up by KQED/PBS of San Francisco, and now airs on their channel, 'TRULY CALIFORNIA.' On April 18, 2006, the documentary, 'The Damnedest, Finest Ruins,' which James wrote, directed and produced, was presented at the 100 year Commemorative, drawing more than 50,000 people to the streets of San Francisco.

In 2005, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution he wrote and proposed, on behalf of himself and historian Gladys Hansen, asking that the 'official' death count of 478 people be amended to reflect the factually accurate count of '3,000 plus victims ” an event that made international news. James has published four books: “Canary In A Coal Mine” (poetry) “Bohemian Heart “Citizen Jane” (true crime), and “1906,” a novel about the great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Martin's Press, 1993), an update of the classic Noir San Francisco Detective Thriller, he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1995. After selling more than a dozen screenplays, and his first novel, BOHEMIAN HEART (St. He wrote more than 75 trailer campaigns, mostly for Columbia Pictures. He moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to pursue a career in screenwriting, selling his first screenplay to Motown while still a student at UCLA.

He's one of the new breed of populist poets who has something to say, quite clearly, about life on the wild side.' Ferlinghetti later said, 'James Dalessandro has given a rebirth to American poetry. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, and Gary Snyder to the seaside town of Santa Cruz, CA breaking attendance records, with 2,000+ people gathering at the Civic Auditorium each night.

At the time, it was the nation's largest annual literary festival, bringing together the likes of Charles Bukowski, William S. After seeing a documentary on the Beat Poets, he packed his bags and hitchhiked to San Francisco, but upon his arrival, was told he was “10 years too late to be part of it.”Īt age 23, he founded The Santa Cruz Poetry Festival, with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Ken Kesey serving as its director from 1973 - 1977. He attended Valley Forge High School, studied journalism at Ohio University, and screenwriting at UCLA Film School. James Dalessandro was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and started writing poems and short stories at age six.

1906 by James Dalessandro