Michelle St. Romain

Michelle St. Romain has loved writing and stories since she could hold a pencil. Co-author of two poetry collections, Promised Fruit and Water’s Edge, her debut novel, Song of Belonging, was released in April 2026 by She Writes Press with distribution to the trade by Simon and Schuster. She holds a B.A. in English from Loyola University, New Orleans and an M.A. in Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento. Her work has been featured in the Poetry Phone Line Project of the Oregon Humanities, The Rapids literary magazine,The Stanford Challenge 2026 Anthology (Wild Poets Press), and on Jefferson Public Radio and Ashland Community Radio. Michelle lives in Southern Oregon with her wife, two spaniels, and a wise, aging cat. They are enjoying watching their three creative young adults launch into the world.

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