The 2026 Festival Details are now live!

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Emily Renk Hawthorne

Emily is a dentist who works with underserved populations. She lives on the California Central Coast with her husband and daughter. She draws on her bicultural background for inspiration in her debut fantasy novel Of Mountains and Seas.

Where to find me at the festival
May 31, 2026 - What the Magic Hides: Moral Truths and Mystery in YA Fantasy

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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