Ruchi Shah

Ruchi Shah is a mom, climate expert, and children’s book author on a mission to make environmental learning feel magical instead of overwhelming. She founded Carbon Tales to help young children build an early connection with nature through stories, play, and everyday actions.

Her book Carbon’s Magic Is Everywhere uses rhyme, imagination, and familiar moments to introduce kids to the hidden role carbon plays in our world. Through joyful, interactive storytimes, Ruchi helps children see that caring for the planet starts with small, simple choices.

She lives in California with her family and loves library visits, nature walks, and reading with her little one.

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