Erica Schlaikjer

Erica Lee Schlaikjer grew up as a mixed-race “Third Culture Kid” in a Foreign Service family, living in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and the United States. Her mother is Falangaw Amis, indigenous to Taiwan. Her father is White American. She writes stories about the joy of belonging, the beauty of fleeting moments, and the wonders of nature. She currently lives with her husband in Los Angeles—the ancestral lands of the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples.

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