“Yeah I’m a Writer. Now What?” A panel discussion for emergent authors and literary program alums looking for advice on what’s next

Event date:
Saturday, May 30
Event time:
2:45pm-3:45pm
Location:
Brower Center, Kinzie Room
Audiences:
Booksales:
Book Society, in the lobby of the venue

If you are a new writer looking for tips on how to live a writer’s life in service to your community, this is the panel for you. Join three working poets and organizers doing exciting things in the fields of music, publishing, activism, arts education, and beyond for a discussion on ways new authors can apply their craft in impactful ways once they’ve chosen the writer’s life. Walk away inspired and with a clearer sense of direction as authors Giovanna Lomanto (Game Over Books), Aleah Bradshaw (aka Nyfe of musical duo “Closegood,” Youth Speaks), and Darius Simpson (When the Smoke Comes, SFJAZZ) share advice from each of their unique paths through the literary world beginning as alums of youth and college writing programs. This panel discussion is open to all, especially alums of the Bay’s rich tapestry of youth literary arts organizations and emerging artists looking for advice on what’s next.

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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