Indicator Lights: Fine Tuning the Past to Drive Your Story into the Future

Event date:
Saturday, May 30
Event time:
11:00am-12:00pm
Location:
Brower Center, Tamalpais Room
Audiences:
Booksales:
Book Society, in the lobby of the venue

The past and the future are linked, nowhere more so than in story. In this session, we will play on the tightrope between past and present, exploring how nailing the details of the past in a story builds a foundation for future worlds, allowing you to believably take the reader anywhere. We will also investigate the empowering role of the narrator, who often speaks from the future of the story. Through four sets of dynamic, generative exercises, attendees will leave the hour with a bevy of new tricks/tips and insights for their writing tool belts.

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.

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