Photo credit: Andrea Price

Jennifer K. Morita

Former newspaper reporter Jennifer K. Morita believes a good story is like good mochi – slightly sweet with a nice chew. Her debut mystery, Ghosts of Waikiki was published by Crooked Lane Books in November 2024 and has been nominated for a Left Coast Crime Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery and an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Jennifer was a runner up for the Sisters in Crime Eleanor Taylor Bland Award in 2022. She is a member of SinC, Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. Jennifer is also active with her local SinC chapter, Capitol Crimes, where she served as vice president and president. Jennifer writes for a university in Northern California, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. When she isn’t plotting murder mysteries or pushing Girl Scout cookies, she enjoys reading, experimenting with recipes, leisurely hikes, Zumba and Hot Hula.

2025 Inside Ideas

Speaker  – Mystery Writers Unmasking Larger Issues

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