Writer-in-Residence Program
Susan Bruns is our writer from October 2024-March 2025
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)
2024/2025 Writers-in-Residence
Alan Heathcock is our writer from April 2025-September 2025
Alan Heathcock is the author of VOLT (Graywolf Press) and 40 (MCD x FSG). He’s won a Whiting Award, National Magazine Award, and has won fellowships from the N.E.A., Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Lannan Foundation, and has twice been a Literature Fellow for the Idaho Commission on the Arts.
2023/2024 Writers-in-Residence
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.