Teen Poetry Workshop led by Youth Speaks

Event date:
Saturday, May 30
Event time:
1:30pm-2:30pm
Location:
Brower Center, Kinzie Room
Booksales:
Book Society, in the lobby of the venue

This is the space at this year’s festival for teens looking to write and share and connect with other young poets from throughout the Bay. Come through to this generative poetry writing workshop especially for you. Led by the SPOKES youth advisory board from Youth Speaks, you will be guided through a fun series of writing prompts and activities to help you practice putting pen to page and saying something meaningful about the world around you. Do you want to share your work on stage? All participants at this workshop will get first choice preference to sign up to perform at the Youth Poetry Open Mic happening 1:45pm-3:45pm Sunday, May 31st at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza Stage. All experience levels are welcome! Just bring your favorite writing utensils and we’ve got the rest. This workshop is only open to teens age 13-19 years old.

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

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