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

Ash Student

Ash is 11 years old and uses they/them pronouns. Their favorite genres to read are thriller and historical fiction, and they very much enjoy being at their school and public library. Ash loves to play outside with dogs, and will be starting middle school in the fall.

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