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

Photo credit: Barry Ebner

Sharon Coleman

Sharon Coleman is a fifth generation Northern Californian with a penchant for languages and their entangled word roots. She co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival. Her books include Paris Blinks, micro-fiction and Half Circle, poetry. She received the Maverick Award from the ruth weiss Foundation. She teaches creative writing at Berkeley City College and composition at U.C. Berkeley www.sharoncolemanpoetry.com.

2025 Bookworm Blockparty

Speaker  – Poetry Postcards (all day drop-in activity)

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