Michael Slack

Michael is an author and illustrator of many children’s books and other cool stuff for kids and adults.

Contemporary art, animation, and modernist design inform my style, but it is humor, playfulness, and a love of quirky characters that are the heart of my illustration.

When not working on book projects Michael likes to paint, draw, and dabble in electronic music. Recently he’s been enjoying making ceramic art figures.

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