May 18-20, 2023 | Join us for three days of writing, reading, and connecting over words.

To Taste Life Twice is a three-day event, free and open to all, meant to deepen our community’s understanding of the human experience through reading and writing. It will provide participants an opportunity to strengthen their writing, explore new methods and topics, and connect with others. The event features three large public programs and five breakouts that are limited to 15 participants each. 

Presented in partnership with Boise-based Story Forward.

Click here to read about events and register for breakout sessions.

Bob Kustra, the host of Reader’s Corner on Boise State Public Radio, will join us for an evening to discuss his interviews and their issues and ideas that matter today.

The program will be livestreamed and available to view later. Link forthcoming.

Reader’s Corner is a weekly radio show and podcast hosted by Boise State University President Emeritus & Professor of Public Service Bob Kustra. Reader’s Corner features lively conversations with leading writers, including many winners of top literary prizes and best-selling authors.

Part of the “To Taste Life Twice” Seminar. Learn more here.

To close out the 2023 “To Taste Life Twice” Seminar, all attendees and the public are invited to hear readings from participants, instructors, and more special guests. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. Sign-ups required for reading slots.

The event is open to all seminar attendees, family and friends, and the entire community!

Upstairs at Whiskey Jacques, 251 N Main St., Ketchum.

Learn more about the three-day “To Taste Life Twice” Seminar here.

VOTE! The Community Library Lecture Hall is a polling location for precincts 3 and 4. Polls open at 8 a.m.
To find your precinct and polling location, or for any other information, contact the Blaine County Elections Office by calling (208) 788-5510 emailing election@blainecounty.org, or visiting https://www.co.blaine.id.us/196/Elections.

with Writer-In-Residence Josh Barkan 

Join us for a conversation with Josh Barkan, Writer-In-Residence at the Hemingway House, who will share selections from his forthcoming memoir Wonder Travels (Roundabout Press, September 2023). He’ll be joined by Martha Williams, the Library’s director of programs and education, for a conversation about his new memoir and the craft of writing. A book signing with Iconoclast Books will follow.

Can we ever really know another person? When, after fifteen years of marriage, his wife has an affair with a man she meets on the beach in Morocco, writer Josh Barkan grapples with this question. In this fearless, breathtakingly candid memoir, he maps a painful odyssey from New York to El Paso to the Apache Kid Wilderness to Mexico City, where he falls in love with a painter who begins to heal him. But two years after his wife’s affair, questions still haunt him. Why did she betray him, and with whom? With no more than a cell phone number, Barkan travels to Morocco to find his wife’s lover and confront his own past.

Josh Barkan won the Lightship International Short Story Prize and was runner-up for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Juniper Prize for Fiction. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in Esquire. He has taught creative writing at Harvard, NYU, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Hollins University and MIT. His books include the novel Blind Speed and short story collections Before Hiroshima and Mexico (Hogarth/Penguin Random House)—named one of the five best story collections of 2017 by Library Journal. He lives in Boston. 

More/register here.

Housing Lessons and Opportunities with Summit County, Colorado’s Housing Director 

Jason Dietz started in 2018 as Summit County, Colorado’s Housing Director, focusing on programs to create affordable housing in the area. He spent the previous decade running the Summit Combined Housing Authority, as a construction manager, in property management, and in land acquisitions and development.

In many respects, the Summit County is a peer community and as such has similar struggles. Jason will describe these struggles and successes, what makes resort communities’ housing challenges unique, and what solutions and tools work well there. One such solution is deed-restricting housing units to people who live and/or work in the area and by income – which can be accomplished with a range of tools including homeownership assistance and public-private partnerships to develop housing. Other initiatives include incentivizing accessory development units (ADUs) and the lease to locals program. 

Jason Dietz will be joined by Carissa Connelly, Housing Director of the City of Ketchum. Ketchum is implementing its year-one Housing Action Plan adopted May 2022, which includes many actions that mirror Summit County’s efforts.

This program will be livestreamed and available to watch later.  In collaboration with the Spur Community Foundation.

More/register here.