Writer-in-Residence Program
Spring 2025/2026 Writer-in-Residence Don Zancanella
Don Zancanella is the author of three novels: Concord, A Storm in the Stars, and Animals of the Alpine Front. He received the John S. Simmons/Iowa Short Fiction Award for his book Western Electric and has won an O.Henry Prize. Zancanella was born in Laramie, Wyoming, and has lived in Virginia, Colorado, Missouri, and New Mexico, where he taught at the University of New Mexico for nearly three decades. He lives in southeast Boise with his wife and their dogs. Find him at donzancanella.com.
The schedule is as follows:
Spring Writing Workshop Event Series
Saturday, April 4 12-2 p.m. at the Library! at Collister, 4724 W State St.
Places we know well often provide a powerful entry point for fiction, poetry, essays, and memoir. Guided by Don, participants will experiment with writing short pieces rooted in familiar locations, paying close attention to how language, memory, and imagination bring those places to life on the page.
Together, the group will discuss how brief place-based writing can open pathways to longer works and deeper exploration. This workshop invites participants to consider how setting can function not just as background, but as an active force in storytelling.
Saturday, May 9 10:30 a.m-12:30 p.m. at the Library! at Hillcrest, 5246 W Overland Rd.
Guided by Don, participants will experiment with short fiction exercises designed to show how invented characters can quickly begin to take on a life of their own.
Together, the group will explore techniques for discovering character through action, voice, and choice, and discuss how playful experimentation can lead to richer stories and unexpected directions. This workshop invites participants to lean into curiosity and trust the creative process as fictional worlds begin to emerge.
Saturday, June 27 10:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. at the Library! Bown Crossing, 2153 E Riverwalk Dr.
Books written for children often embody qualities all writers strive for: concision, clarity, immediacy, and verve. Guided by Don, participants will examine several works of children’s literature to explore how these qualities function on the page and why they’re so effective.
This workshop will offer how techniques commonly found in children’s books, such as economy of language, vivid detail, and emotional directness, can inform and strengthen fiction, poetry, essays, and other forms of writing for readers of any age.
Please note: this workshop is not about writing for children, but about using children’s literature as a lens to think more deeply about all kinds of writing.
Saturday, July 25 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. at Erma Hayman House, 617 Ash St.
Very short stories, often called flash fiction, are especially fun to write because they allow writers to create work that feels whole and satisfying in a limited amount of time. Guided by Don, participants will experiment with brevity, focus, and precision as they draft several short pieces during the session.
Together, the group will discuss what gives flash fiction its impact and how constraint can spark creativity. By the end of the workshop, participants will leave with brief pieces that are ready, or nearly ready, to share with the world.
Saturday, August 22 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. at the Library! at Cole & Ustick, 7557 W Ustick Rd.
Revision is often where the real writing happens. Guided by Don, participants will learn and practice several revision strategies he uses in his own work to make the process feel not only manageable, but even, dare we say, enjoyable.
Together, the group will experiment with practical tools for re-seeing and reshaping drafts, focusing on clarity, structure, and voice. This workshop invites writers to approach revision as a creative act rather than a chore, and to leave with techniques they can return to again and again.
Saturday, September 19 10:30 a.m - 12:30 p.m. at The Cabin, 801 S Capitol Blvd.
Writers have long shared thoughts about writing that can inspire, challenge, irritate, or completely reframe how we approach our work. Guided by Don, participants will read and discuss a selection of remarks from a range of writers and consider how these perspectives resonate (or don’t) with their own creative practices.
Together, the group will explore how reflecting on others’ ideas about writing can spark new questions, affirm instincts, or encourage writers to experiment with new approaches. This workshop is designed to be thoughtful, conversational, and generative for writers at any stage.
Past Writers-in-Residence
Kim Cross is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist, and historian known for cinematic scenes, page-turning narratives, and character-driven stories that guide readers through some complex, nuanced issue. Her first book, What Stands in a Storm, was one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2015 and a finalist in the GoodReads Choice Awards. Her most recent book, In Light of All Darkness, was an Edgar Award finalist and winner of the Truman Capote Prize for Distinguished Work of Non-Fiction. Cross teaches feature writing for Harvard Extension School’s graduate program in journalism, the Larry McMurtry Literary Center in Archer City, Texas, and the Sawtooth Writing Retreat in Idaho. Find her at kimhcross.com, @kimhcross, or writing at Oldspeak in Garden City.
The workshops are geared toward writers of all levels and genres. As mature content may be discussed, parental discretion is advised for participants under 18. Please bring writing materials, such as a notebook and pen. The schedule was as follows:
Gathering Thread and Finding Stories | October 25, 2025
Writing Cinematic Scenes | November 13, 2025
Bringing Characters to Life | December 4, 2025
Dialogue | January 24, 2026
Story Structure | February 28, 2026
Pitching and Getting Published | March 12, 2026
Alan Heathcock, award-winning author of VOLT and 40, shares "The Five Tenets of Literary Potency", a workshop series that distills everything Heathcock has learned during 30 years of writing/editing/publishing/teaching. Over the years, Heathcock studied ways in which he could qualitatively evaluate his own work and the work of the writers he mentored. Through trial and error, inflation and conflation, he arrived at five conceptual truths that apply to all genres and styles of writing and can be used by any writer to evaluate and optimize their work. In this workshop, Heathcock will teach the five tenets he believes are absolutes in powerful storytelling. He’ll deliver his findings in a series of interactive workshops open to writers of all levels and genres.
Though attendees are encouraged to attend the entire series, there’s value to attending any of the workshops as single events. The schedule was as follows:
Tenet #1: Empathy
- Saturday, April 19th, 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. — Downtown Library, Marion Bingham Room
Tenet #2: Authenticity
- Saturday, May 31st, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m. — Library! at Cole & Ustick, Sagebrush Room
Tenet #3: Urgency
- Saturday, June 21st, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m. — Library! at Hillcrest, Butte Room
Tenet #4: Meaning
- Saturday, July 19th, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m. — Library! at Collister, Sycamore Room
Tenet #5: Originality
- Saturday, August 16th, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m. — Library! at Bown Crossing, Martie Brennan Room
Culminating Event: A Community Reading and Celebration of the Written Word
- Saturday, September 20th, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m. — Erma Hayman House
Susan Bruns is an Idaho-based writer whose essays and stories have appeared in The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, LitHub, Under the Gum Tree, The Clackamas Literary Review, and elsewhere.
She is the recipient of grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and the City of Boise for her writing. In 2020, she was a Surel’s Place Artist in Residence, and she was named a 2021 finalist for the Richard J. Margolis nonfiction writing award for her essay about a sibling’s struggle with mental illness and addiction.
She has an MFA in creative writing from Boise State University and degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Idaho. She has taught dozens of writing workshops to students of all ages and enjoys teaching the craft of writing and encouraging others to write their stories.
Susan grew up on a farm next to the Snake River Canyon on Idaho’s high desert and writes about how her family battled the harsh conditions, beginning with her grandparents who were homesteaders. She is the mother of two adult children and works for Fahlgren Mortine, an integrated communications agency with offices in Boise.
Susan Bruns Writer-in-Residence schedule 2024-2025
October 30th, 6 p.m.-8 p.m. — Erma Hayman House
November 9th, 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m. — Library! at Hillcrest, Canyon Room
December 11th, 6 p.m.-7:45 p.m. — Library! at Bown Crossing, Martie Brennan Room
January 22nd, 6 p.m.-7:45 p.m. — Library! at Collister, Sycamore Room
February 12th, 6 p.m.-7:45p.m. — Downtown Library, Marion Bingham Room
March 19th, 6 p.m.-7:45 p.m. — Library! at Cole & Ustick, Sagebrush Room (Culminating Event)
October 2023 - March 2024
Natalie Disney earned her MFA in creative writing from Boise State University, where she served as Associate Editor of The Idaho Review. Her work has been published in The Florida Review and The Mississippi Review and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the PEN America Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She is a recipient of the 2017 Balch Award for fiction. Natalie teaches creative writing at Boise State University and The Cabin Center for Readers and Writers. She lives near the Boise foothills with her wife, where she is at work on her first novel.
April - September 2024
Heidi Kraay is a playwright and writer across disciplines whose work collides myth, metaphor, and monsters to discover connections across differences. Her work has been presented locally, regionally, and internationally, including full-lengths, co-devised projects, one-acts, plays for young audiences, and shorts. Projects in other disciplines include 2 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle, a memoir-adjacent book of essays in the ancient century form forthcoming through Modern Mythographer, and Drown to Resurface, an album of poem-songs in collaboration with musician Thomas Paul. She holds an MFA in Creative Inquiry and Interdisciplinary Arts from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America through which she is beginning the Dramatists Guild Institute’s Certificate Program. Learn more at heidikraay.com
The Cabin, the Boise Public Library, and the Boise City Department of Arts & History invites emerging and mid-career writers to apply for a six-month residency in Boise.
This program is designed to connect local writers to the community of Boise through literary public programming events hosted monthly at Boise Public Library branches and the Erma Hayman House.
The selected Residents are responsible for developing and facilitating a series of public programs and will receive a $5000 stipend to support their creative work, and to develop these programs. The public programs may included themed or open writing workshops, reading series, writing explorations or other literary experiences.
The goal of this Residency is to:
- Support local emerging and mid-career writers in their creative practice.
- Provide free and accessible literary programs to the community.
- Raise awareness of the services and programs of the Cabin, the Boise Public Library and the Boise City Department of Arts and History.