Julia was a trial lawyer in Silicon Valley for over two decades. She attended U.C Berkeley and majored in Asian Studies. She often writes with co-author Ken Bebelle. Their debut novel Ebony Gate, an Asian-inspired urban fantasy was a 2023 Golden Poppy Finalist for the Octavia E. Butler award.
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.
Speaker – A Compass in the Wilderness: Poetry in the Age of Environmental Crisis
