While he is best known as one half of the hilarious duo Cheech and Chong, Marin is now gaining recognition as the owner of one of the world’s largest collections of Chicano Art. He will discuss the unique contribution Chicano artists have made to American culture and fine art in his lecture and slide presentation.

Stephen Lewis is one of North America’s most respected commentators on social affairs, international development and human rights. In 2005 TIME magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” (in the same category as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela) for his life-long dedication to social causes and improving the human condition. He spent more than twenty years at the United Nations, serving as the Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. Lewis is currently the director of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, an organization committed to easing the suffering of women and families in Africa affected by HIV and AIDS. www.stephenlewisfoundation.org

Photographer Edward Weston, one of the best known 20th century photographers, is most closely identified with Carmel, California, where he worked during the 1930s and 1940s. However, few people realize that he spent the first 17 years of his career in Los Angeles. Soon after Weston left Los Angeles, he destroyed many of his photographs and personal papers, thereby effectively deleting most of his early history. Independent photography curator Beth Gates Warren has spent the last decade piecing together the story of Weston’s “lost years.” She will reveal recently discovered information about his fascinating bohemian friends, in particular, photographer Margrethe Mather, who played an important and previously unrecognized role in his development as an artist. Warren will also explain why Weston attempted to rewrite his own history and why he resolutely refused to acknowledge those who influenced him during his years in the City of the Angels.

Celebrated author Anthony Doerr will be in the Valley to teach a fiction workshop for The Center. While here, he will read from his newest work. Doerr is the author of three books, The Shell Collector, About Grace, and Four Seasons in Rome. His fiction has won several awards, including the American Library Association Book of the Year. From 2007 through 2010, Doerr is the Writer-in-Residence for the state of Idaho.

Students at The Center’s third annual writers workshop will read samples of their work. Please join us in celebrating local talent and hearing new voices in fiction.

Mara Liasson is the national political correspondent for NPR, and a regular panelist on Fox News Channel. She has extensive experience covering political campaigns and has covered three presidential elections.

Mary Oliver is one of the most celebrated poets of our time. Her poetry, which celebrates the natural world, has won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry. “Poetry isn’t a profession; it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that,” says Mary Oliver. Her highly celebrated work deals largely with the natural world. The Harvard Review states that her poems are “an excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization, for too much flurry and inattention.”

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, as well as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is an influential cultural critic and author who hosted the PBS documentary series African American Lives which uses genealogy and DNA to trace the roots of influential African Americans down through American history and back to Africa.

Michael Pollan is the author, most recently of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. His previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is the recipient of several journalistic awards, was the executive editor of Harper’s Magazine for many years, and now serves as the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Michael Chabon won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, an epic story of two Jewish cousins who create comics in America as Europe is torn apart by World War II. His recent New Yorker article, Secret Skin: An Essay in Unitard Theory, explores the power of superheroes in our collective imagination.