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

Blaise Zerega

Blaise Zerega is the editorial director of Alta Journal, an award-winning quarterly publication focused on the arts and culture of California and the West. At Alta, Blaise is responsible for print, online, events, and personnel; he personally edits all fiction and poetry. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, WIRED, Conde Nast Portfolio, and others. He’s taught or lectured at schools and writing programs including UC Riverside, San Francisco State University, and the Community of Writers. Blaise’s media appearances include Today, The View, NPR, and CNN. He attended the United States Military Academy, New York University, and the University of Texas, where he received a Michener Fellowship for fiction writing from the Texas Center for Writers.

Where to find me at the festival
May 31, 2026 - Best of California

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