Guisela Penados Baldizón is a writer of fiction, poetry, and prose. She has been working with young writers for more than fifteen years. A native of Guatemala, Guisela has lived in Boise for 25 years where she was a Top Ten Scholar at Boise State University and earned her M.A. in Literacy. She has been teaching since 1977. She has provided literacy and whole language Spanish workshops throughout the Northwest. One of her favorite projects has been to work with street children in Guatemala, showing them how to use literacy to find their voices. She runs La Tertulia Spanish Learning Center in Boise, an organization that aims to promote bilingualism and the benefits of multiculturalism.

Being charged by a grizzly in Denali National Park, to being bitten by piranhas in the Amazon Elizabeth Barnes is an avid adventurer and outdoor enthusiast. She loves reading, writing, cooking, and parenting. A lecturer at Boise State University, Elizabeth teaches writing by day and by night battles dragons via her pen.

Kyle Bilinski worked two jobs while earning his MFA in Writing from Pacific University. He’s punched the clock as a painting contractor, delivery driver, flight attendant, will-call counter salesman, commercial estimator, and residential plans examiner. His work-minded writing can be found in places like The Baltimore Review, BULL, Eckleburg, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Overtime, and forthcoming from Iron Horse Literary Review.

Colleen Brennan is a freelance writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher with an MA in linguistics. Her stories appear in the Boise Weekly, Writers in the Attic, and A Year in Ink. A native Minnesotan, she has lived and worked in San Diego, Boulder, Paris, Bordeaux, and Boise. She is the recipient of a literary arts grant from the Alexa Rose Foundation.

Kira Compton is currently pursuing an MFA at Boise State, where she serves as the Associate Editor of The Idaho Review. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming from The Florida Review: Aquifer, Saranac Review, hex literary, Into the Void, and others. Stalk her professional life at kiracompton.com and her personal life @kirajcompton.

Natalie Disney recently 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, The Mississippi Review, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the PEN America Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She is a recipient of the 2017 Glenn Balch Award for fiction. She teaches writing at BSU and is at work on her first novel.

McKenna Esteb is an accomplished local musician. With 5+ years of songwriting experience and performances all over the United States, she has made a dent in the Boise music scene. Since first moving back to Boise in 2021 she released her debut EP, played Flipside, Treefort, Alive After Five, performed live on KTVB, opened for various touring acts, and is regularly featured on Radio Boise & KBSU. This year she is releasing her first ever full length album.

Stories of her works have been published in Boise Weekly, Idaho 6 News, Idaho Press, and Nanobot Rock. Now that she is rooted in Boise her goal is to share her personal techniques and create a safe space where vulnerable conversations can be held and creative ideas can be brought to life.

Rebecca Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist. She’s a military veteran, a serious gardener, and often engages in self-hand-to-hand combat. You can find her writing in her hammock, under the stairwell, or stuck in a fluffy chair. She teaches. A lot. She also co-hosts a radio show, Writer to Writer, on Radio Boise and lives in Idaho with sons and Newfoundlands and a squawky Calico cat.

Her poems and essays have appeared in Narratively, The Rumpus, War, Literature & the Arts, The Limberlost Review, and a handful of anthologies. She’s co-edited an anthology of poems, WHEN THERE ARE NINE, a tribute to the life and achievements of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Moon Tide Press). Her full-length poetry collection, a memoir-in-verse, TANGLED BY BLOOD, is available wherever fine books are sold.

Evans earned two MFAs, one in creative nonfiction, the other in poetry, University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.

Sonya Feibert (she/her) is a writer, comedian, and improvisor who's tried out too many jokes on her dog (Chloe is unimpressed). She's completed humor and sketch writing courses through NYU, Second City, Hoopla, St. Nell's, Thurber House, and more. Her writing appears in the Writers in the Attic anthology: Rupture, Dovetail Literary Magazine, The Belladonna Comedy, Slackjaw Humor, and more. In 2021, she was awarded an Alexa Rose Grant, and in 2022 received a grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Learn more: yesandsome.com

Alli Frank has worked in education as a teacher and assistant head of school for over 20 years. She is the co-author, with Asha Youmans, of Tiny Imperfections, Never Meant to Meet You, The Better Half, and Boss Lady, and the upcoming On Being Jewish Now, available October 2024. Tiny Imperfections is being adapted into a television show by Lionsgate TV. A graduate of Cornell and Stanford University, Alli lives in Sun Valley, Idaho with her husband and two daughters.

Meg Freitag was born in Maine. She earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has an MFA in Poetry from UT Austin's Michener Center for Writers, and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first poetry collection, EDITH, was published by BOAAT Press in 2017. Individual poems have appeared in Tin House, Boston Review, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She's currently at work on a second poetry collection, a short story collection, and a novel. She lives and works in Boise, Idaho.

Sharon Hanson has been a high school language arts and creative writing teacher for over thirty years, most recently retired from Boise High School. The core of her teaching has always been the power of narrative. Writing is her parallel passion; she cobbles words together to make sense of the world. Sharon has worked as a freelance writer in the past and continues to write with her students. Her daily writing has taken shape as a book for Scholastic and a Fiction 101 First Place. Currently she works as a trainer for Narrative 4, furthering her belief that by sharing our stories we grow community.

Kelly Harwood earned her MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2015. She has taught English and creative writing for over twenty years. Kelly believes that life, like writing, is a creative act. To do it well, we must see ourselves as the protagonist of our own story. To that end, narrative writing at its best, can be a vehicle for growth, purpose, compassion and connection. Along with her work as a teacher and freelance writer, Kelly is a certified life coach specializing in narrative coaching—a practice that combines the tenets of professional coaching with narrative writing strategies and techniques. More about Kelly and her writing can be found at kellyharwood.com

Michelle Hazen is the award-winning author of nine novels. Her work has been honored as Booklist's Best Books of the year, several times for Amazon's Editors' Picks for Best Romance, have received a stack of starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist, and have won the Book Pipeline Award, Lonestar Award, Great Expectations Award, and Linda Howard Award of Excellence. She loves encouraging authors and helping them find their authentic voice through her work as a writing coach and freelance editor with Sanctuary Editorial. She's been traveling as a digital nomad for fourteen years now, and her travels have greatly informed much of her writing. Traveling writing sprints like these are her way to pay it forward and show writers how the world and people around them contains every spark of inspiration they'll ever need!

Chris Mathers Jackson is a freelance writer and editor, an aspiring novelist, a teacher, a mom, an artist, and a lover of the natural world. Chris received her MA in English Literature from University of Montana in 2005. She taught English Composition at UM from 2003-2006, both during and following completion of her master’s (as a TA and then an adjunct instructor). She worked in the administration of Missoula International School from 2006-2010 before becoming a full-time freelance writer, editor, and graphic designer. After several years, she stopped doing design work professionally to focus on her growing family and her passion for the written word. In 2019 she established a book review website (LitReaderNotes). In addition to teaching, writing, and editing, Chris enjoys spending as much time outside as possible, adventuring both near and far, with her husband and two daughters.

Josephine Jones has won numerous awards for her writing and poetry, including a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, and she performed with artists and musicians across the west coast. Jones directed programs and the Colorado Center for the Book for Colorado Humanities and taught humanities for the University of Denver. She is the author of Sane in Pain, a writing approach to healing. She holds an M.A. in Education from Boise State University.

Playwright and writer across disciplines Heidi Kraay examines the link between brain and body, seeking empathy with fractured characters. Her work pulls myth, metaphor and monsters together to discover connections across difference. Plays include Unwind: Hindsight is 2020, see in the dark, How to Hide Your Monster, New Eden and Kilgore, as well as co-devised plays, one-acts, plays for young audiences and short plays. Her work has been presented in Boise, regionally, in NYC and internationally, most recently through the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, MING Studios, Mission at Tenth’s podcast Artifact, Boise Contemporary Theater, Storyfort, Climate Change Theatre Action, The Bechdel Group, West of Lenin Theatre, Spark! Creative Works and Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Recent publications include Smith & Kraus and Magical Women Magazine. Heidi holds an MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts from California Institute of Integral Studies and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America. www.heidikraay.com

Patricia Marcantonio is author of the Victorian mystery series, Felicity Carrol and Perilous Pursuit and Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace (Crooked Lane Books); Verdict in the Desert (Arte Público Press, the largest US publisher of contemporary and recovered literature by US Hispanic authors); and Red Ridin’ in the Hood and Other Cuentos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) that earned an Anne Izard Storyteller’s Choice Award and was named an Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Commended Title and one of the Wilde Awards Best Collections to Share. Stories from the book are included in a National Geographic School Publishing textbook. She is co-owner of River Street Press, which publishes regional books such as Hauntings From the Snake River Plain. Her screenplays have hit the top percentage in several contests and she took first in the Willamette Writers Kay Snow Screenplay contest. Her original play Tears for Llorona was produced by the Magic Valley Arts Council and will be produced this fall.

Aurora Mehlman is an emerging fiction writer who works with The Cabin, College of Western Idaho, and Boise State University teaching classes in Creative Writing, English, and Digital Arts. She is also active in her local community. Mehlman is staff at Treefort’s Storyfort, where she organizes and facilitates great programming from both local acts and visiting authors, and she is the co-director of the Bishop’s House Writing Collective. Recently, she has been published in 45th Parallel and Boise Weekly, and she shared her stories at the Idaho Botanical Garden, Scaryfort, and Story Story Night’s Grand Slam. Mehlman is currently at work on a novel.

Caleb Merritt is completing his MFA in Poetry at Boise State University. A self-proclaimed “typophiliac,” he also tends to write on whatever medium he can find closest to him: Blackwing pencil, crunchy keyboard, 1954 Smith-Corona typewriter, or otherwise. You can find some of the things he writes for pay-what-you-want (or free) online at literarymerritt.gumroad.com, which is supposed to be a clever pun on his last name. He attempts to live with gratitude and to write bios that don't make him seem closed off and aloof. Before graduate school, he worked for Habitat for Humanity.