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

Naima Cinnamongirl

Naima is a 7th grader living in Walnut Creek. She enjoys reading, writing short fiction, volleyball, and Taekwondo. This is her 4th year as a Cinnamongirl where she has participated in book club, the entrepreneur program, and travel girl.

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