Marie Sutro

Marie Sutro is the award-winning and Amazon bestselling author of the Kate Barnes crime thriller series, as well as a variety of short fiction. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, her community service roles include Vice President of her local chapter of Sisters in Crime, Secretary of Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, and tutor to adult learners in California Library Literacy Services.

When she’s not writing, Marie hosts the popular podcast, Twisted Passages. The show delves into the dark and compelling world of psychological thrillers with the authors who write them. Featuring the industry’s most highly acclaimed authors, as well as debut authors, and everyone in between, the show is meant for readers and writers who love good stories and good conversations.

Marie resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her next novel in the Kate Barnes series, Dark Reckonings, will be released in 2026.

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