Emily St. James

Emily St. James is a writer and cultural critic. Her journalism and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Vox, and The A.V. Club, and her writing for television has been featured on the Emmy-nominated series Yellowjackets. She is the author of the novels Woodworking and the upcoming Beth March Returns from the Dead. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

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