Elisa Stone Leahy is a queer, Peruvian American children’s author who lives with her husband and kids in Columbus, Ohio. Whether creating award-winning documentary films or connecting readers to books through her work at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Elisa has always surrounded herself with stories. She is the author of Tethered to Other Stars and Mallory in Full Color.
Speaker – Finding Your Place in Middle Grade
Dan Alter’s poems, reviews and translations have been published in journals including Field, Fourteen Hills, and Zyzzyva; his first collection My Little Book of Exiles won the 2022 Cowan Poetry Prize. A volume of translations Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited, from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe, was published by Ben Yehuda Press in September 2024, and Hills Full of Holes, a second collection of poems, by Fernwood Press in March 2025. He lives with his wife and daughter in Berkeley. He works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley.
Speaker – A Compass in the Wilderness: Poetry in the Age of Environmental Crisis
