Tonight Will Alexander and Justin Desmangles will be talking about and listening to Bob Kaufman's engagement with the music of Charlie Parker, as well as Eric Dolphy, Kaufman's contemporary in the Black California avant-garde. This event is part of the the San Francisco International Flor y Canto Literary Festival and is being presented by The Before Columbus Foundation.

Writer, artist, philosopher, and pianist Will Alexander was born in Los Angeles, California in 1948 and has remained a lifetime resident of the city. He earned a BA in English and creative writing from the University of California–Los Angeles in 1972. Alexander’s over two dozen books of poetry include Across the Vapour Gulf (2017), Compression & Purity (2011), The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (2009), Asia & Haiti (1995), and The Stratospheric Canticles (1995). He has taught at many colleges and universities, including the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, the University of California, and Hofstra University, among others. His collection Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture (2013) was awarded an American Book Award. Alexander was a 2022 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Justin Desmangles is chairman of the Before Columbus Foundation, administrator of the American Book Award, and former host of the radio broadcast New Day Jazz. A member of the board of directors of the Oakland Book Festival, Mr. Desmangles is also a program producer at the African-American Center of the San Francisco Public Library. He is the co-author with Jack Hirschman of Passion, Provocation & Prophecy: A Pier Paolo Pasolini Dossier. His poetry and journalism has appeared in Amerarcana, Black Renaissance Noire, Drumvoices Revue, Konch, and Musiqology. He was a Columnist-in-Residence at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Open Space, 2017.