Jeremy David Engels

Jeremy David Engels is the author of six books, including the forthcoming On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World (Parallax, 2026). He is the Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University, co-founder of Yoga Lab, and a mindfulness and yoga teacher. Engels’ research reimagines democracy as a communal practice rooted in care, deliberation, and shared responsibility, emphasizing mindfulness as a core civic skill. His work has earned the Karl Wallace Award, the New Investigator Award from the National Communication Association, and Penn State’s Outstanding Tenure-Line Faculty Teaching Award.

Where to find me at the festival
May 30, 2026 - Mindful Democracy

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