Thank you so much for joining us at this years festival. Join us for the Merritt Dialogues on the 8 July. 

Photo credit: Jasmeet Singh

Gianna Toboni

Gianna Toboni is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. Formerly a senior correspondent and producer for VICE News, Toboni has covered escalating cartel violence and political corruption in Mexico, interviewed ISIS fighters, tracked down Nigerian pirates on their illegal oil refineries, and more. She received a GLAAD Media Award for her coverage of the battle between religious and LGBTQ rights in America, a Webby Award for Best Documentary Series, and was recognized by the Newswomen’s Club of New York at the Front Page Awards for her reporting on transgender youth. Toboni was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for Media, is a TEDx Speaker, and Peabody Finalist. The Volunteer is her first book.

2025 Inside Ideas

Speaker  – Ghosts of Justice: Exposing the Failures and Reimagining the Future of the American Legal System

Dan Alter

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.

2025 Writers’ Workshops

Speaker A Compass in the Wilderness: Poetry in the Age of Environmental Crisis