Summer Camps

Create succulent stories and poems.

Creative writing makes science come alive at The Foothills Learning Center. In this full-day camp, explore Boise’s foothills with a pencil and notebook in hand. Together with a Cabin teaching-writer and a naturalist, you’ll observe our native environment and translate what you learn to wildly original poetry and stories.

A collaboration of The Cabin and Idaho Botanical Garden.

Narrative is at the heart of humankind, with stories informing our understanding of the world for centuries. But how do we foster a deeper knowledge of our truths and our shared history? Join us in this all-day camp where you’ll dive into the foundation of human rights and, using works inspired by great writers and activists, you’ll write your truth and learn how we’re all woven together in an interconnected fabric of the past, present, and future.

Find your truth and write your story.

Joan Didion said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” But how do we share those stories? How do we write them? Through powerful language, truth, and our unique vision of the world. Work with an experienced teaching-writer from The Cabin to tell your story (or poem), shaping your words into language that leaps off the page and stays with your reader forever.

Create a play you can take from the page to the stage.

It’s five minutes to curtain – are you ready? Work alongside a professional playwright to learn the essential tools of playwriting (like plot, action, character, and dialogue) to build a one act play from the ground up. Participate in acting exercises to experience the collaborative process that can make writing for theater feel like anything is possible. 


Write for the eye, with your soul as your guide.

Cave paintings. Hieroglyphics. Graffiti. Even before letters, we told stories through pictures. Explore the raw power of connecting words and images as you work to bring visual poems and stories alive with characters, plot, and a rich background. With excursions about town and graphic texts to draw from, discover how to produce collages, comics, illustrated poems, calligraphy, and stories meant for the eye.

Build a (strange) new world in this sci-fi/fantasy fiction camp

Zombies, dragons, robots, oh my! Kick things off by working with other writers to build the rules for the fantastical realm of your dreams. With your teaching-writer/wizard guiding you about town, let your imagination boil and bubble as you create an original short story inspired by this strange land – all while learning the spells behind all good stories, like plot, dialogue, character, and setting.

Pound the pavement and take your imagination downtown.

The city has its own heartbeat (or so the song goes). Can you find it? Using cityscapes, coffee shops, public art, and urban life as your map, find and write the pulse of an urban-influenced short story or poem – with characters spotted on street corners, plots born out of passing conversations, and the vibrant settings of alleys, parks, and mysterious buildings.

Get inspired by meeting the raptors soaring above us.

Did you know the owl turns his head because his eyes can’t move? Or that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth? Get an up-close look at vultures, eagles, and some of the globe’s largest hawks at the World Center for Birds of Prey. Hear from scientists about important bird conservation projects – then, strike out with your Cabin teaching-writer to transform your new, ornithological knowledge into raptor-inspired poems and short stories.

Learn a new language through the eyes of an animal.

What does an anteater smell? How do giraffes sleep? What do turtles fear most? Start this all-day camp at Zoo Boise each morning for zoo-educator-led activities that provide a better understanding of animals and the dangers they face, as well as how you can work for conservation. In the afternoon, head to The Cabin, where you’ll work with a teaching-writer to hone your creative writing skills and create a collection of reptilian and amphibian-inspired poems and short stories.

Note: This is an all-day camp. Pack a lunch!

Set your poems and stories in motion with games and play.

What does joy smell like? Taste like? And what rhymes with orange? (Door hinge? More hens?) Play the types of story and word games that wake up all five senses, sparking creativity and encouraging new paths to writing imaginative poems and stories. Then, explore nearby parks and other locations for inspiration. 

Learn the tools to produce your own blockbuster screenplays.

Feel that force, flowing through you? That’s visual storytelling, the language of action and romance, drama and comedy, waiting for you to harness it. With popular movies and classic cinema as your director, learn how to develop characters, plot, action, and dialogue that turns a notion into an idea and an idea into a script.