Angela Montoya

Angela Montoya lives in Northern California with her family. When she isn’t with her partner, two children, goats, chickens, and dogs, you can find Angela co-hosting the podcast, Of the Publishing Persuasion. Her debut novel, SINNER’S ISLE, has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and trade reviews from Booklist and The Bulletin. Her award-winning sophomore novel, A CRUEL THIRST, was chosen as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, an Editor’s Pick: Best YA of December by Amazon Books, and one of the Best YA Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews. Her newest release, CARNIVAL FANTASTICO received multiple trade reviews and was a Target exclusive pick.

Where to find me at the festival

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