Susan Lieu

Vietnamese-American author, playwright, and performer Susan Lieu takes audiences on a journey of healing intergenerational trauma, embracing authenticity, and finding boldness in vulnerability. Her debut memoir, The Manicurist’s Daughter (Celadon), has received accolades from The New York TimesNPR BooksElle Magazine, and The Washington Post, and is an Apple Book Pick of the Month and Must Listen of the Month. Lieu is the creator of her theatrical solo show “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother,” which received critical acclaim from LA Times, NPR, and American Theatre. The co-founder of Socola Chocolatier, Susan is a proud alumnus of Harvard College, Yale School of Management, and Hedgebrook.

2025 Inside Ideas

Speaker  – A Memoir for Remembrance

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