Thank you so much for joining us at this years festival. Join us for the Merritt Dialogues on the 8 July. 

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Keenan Norris

Keenan Norris’s latest novel, “The Confession of Copeland Cane”, won the 2022 Northern California Book Award. His essays have garnered the National A & E Journalism Award and Folio Award. His other books include the non-fiction work “Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings” and his debut novel “Brother and the Dancer”.

Keenan’s feature pieces and articles have appeared in numerous forums, including The Nation, Alta, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, TED-ED, and Zyzzyva, while his short fiction has been published in several anthologies of California literature. He is an Associate Professor at San Jose State University.

Where to find me at the festival
May 30, 2026 - The Ins and Outs of MFA programs with SJSU

VIEW ALL OUR 2026 SPEAKERS

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