May 7-9, 2026
Join us for three days of writing, reading, and connecting over words
This free annual, three-day event features writing workshops with esteemed Idaho writers, an opening keynote from a guest author, and a closing storytelling event where writers of all levels are invited to share their work. Come explore new methods, strengthen your writing, and connect with others. Writing workshops are limited in size but open to all levels.
Presented in partnership with Boise-based Story Forward.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection… to record the journey … to expand our world…”
Anaïs Nin
Schedule of Events
Thursday, May 7
5:00 – 5:30 p.m. | Registration & Check-In | Lecture Hall Entry
Writing workshop participants can check in early for individual workshops and receive materials.
5:30 p.m. | Opening Keynote with KIM BARNES & ROBERT WRIGLEY | Lecture Hall
The works of these Kim Barnes and Robert Wrigley, from fiction to memoir, poetry to essays, pair together beautifully, reckoning with belief and survival, beauty and endurance. Join us for a conversation with these award-winning writers (who are also married), as we talk about their work, teaching creative writing at the University of Idaho, and why telling stories matters.
Friday, May 8
2:00 – 5:00 p.m. | Writing Workshops 1 & 2 | Multiple Library Rooms
Registration is required for workshops, which are limited to 15 attendees each. All breakouts are free and open to all levels.
Workshop 1 | Love’s Labors: Turning Relationships into Literary Form with Thomas Dai
How does one turn a relationship into an artful and compelling nonfiction story? This generative workshop invites writers to approach their intimate relationships as a problem of literary structure, form, and voice.
Workshop 2 | Beginning with the Thing with Robert Wrigley
How do you get started, even if you don’t have any idea where you’re going? You begin with the thing. A thing. Anything—any thing—will do. The thing will matter because you chose to begin writing from it, but the plan is to let that thing, and its contemplation, lead to something more.
Saturday, May 9
10:30 – 11:30 a.m. | Writers Roundtable | Lecture Hall
The five “To Taste Life Twice” writing instructors will come together for a panel discussion and share more about their writing lives and practice. Join us to hear from these esteemed Idaho writers and to pose your own questions to them. Coffee and light pastries will be provided. No registration required. Learn more here.
1:00 – 4:00 p.m. | Writing Workshops 3, 4 & 5 | Multiple Library Rooms
Registration is required for workshops, which are limited to 15 attendees each. All breakouts are free and open to all levels.
Workshop 3 | Object to Essay: Finding Your Master Narrative with Kim Barnes
Who am I, and why? This is the question writers of personal nonfiction must ask in order to understand their Master Narrative and how it informs their writing and their lives. In this workshop, we will discuss how to identify yours as well as how it informs and defines your personal, familial, and socio-cultural mythology.
Workshop 4 | Laughing Matters with Tiffany Midge
Humor becomes a courageous and intelligent act of resistance in the face of despair. We will read passages that employ these concepts and discuss the particular elements of craft that make the passages work to their fullest effect.
Workshop 5 | Openings That Hook & Endings That Crush in Literary Fiction with Christian Winn
Let’s dive in and explore how to better open our stories, novels, flash and micro fiction with punch and artful verve, and then how to round out these narratives with banger endings that deliver heart, inevitability, and resonant truth.
5:00 – 7:00 p.m. | Closing Event | Lecture Hall
To close out the seminar, all attendees and the public are invited to hear readings from participants, instructors, and more special guests. Light food and beverages will be served. Open to all: seminar attendees, family and friends, and the general public! Learn more here.
More Opportunities for Participants
Manuscript Review with Christian Winn
As part of the seminar, TTLT instructor Christian Winn will offer one-on-one manuscript reviews of fiction or creative nonfiction for up to three individuals. Participants who sign up will pay Christian directly ($150 per manuscript review of up to 25 double-spaced pages), share a manuscript ahead of time and receive early feedback, then meet with him one-on-one during the seminar weekend at an agreed upon time to discuss revision analysis, receive additional feedback, and talk next steps for the manuscript. Email Christian Winn directly at christian.winn@gmail.com for complete details if you are interested in this opportunity.
About the Instructors
Kim Barnes was raised in the logging camps and small towns of Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. Her novels and memoirs have been named among the best books of the year by San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Washington Post, and The Kansas City Star. Her novel A Country Called Home received the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction, and she is a recipient of the PEN/Jerard Award for her first memoir, In the Wilderness, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, WSJ, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. A former Idaho Writer-in-Residence, recipient of an Idaho Governor’s Arts Award, and University of Idaho Distinguished Professor Emerita, she lives with her husband, Robert Wrigley, in the mountains of North Idaho.
Thomas Dai is the author of the essay collection Take My Name but Say It Slow. He has published his work in many journals, including The Georgia Review, Guernica, The Rumpus, and The Yale Review, and received fellowships from Lambda Literary, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Born and raised in Tennessee, Thomas now lives in the Inland Pacific Northwest, where he is an assistant professor of English at the University of Idaho.
Tiffany Midge was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest and aspires to be the Distinguished Writer in Residence for Seattle’s Space Needle. She is a former humor columnist for Indian Country Today and currently contributes Heard Around the West for High Country News. Her books of essays include “Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s” and “The Dreamcatcher in the Wry,” both from Bison Books. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Real Simple, The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail and more. Her poetry collections include “Horns,” winner of a Wilder Prize with Two Sylvias Press, and “The Woman Who Married a Bear” winner of the Kenyon Review Earthworks Indigenous Poetry Prize and a Western Heritage Award. Midge enjoys frisky romps through dewy meadows and considers her contribution to humanity to be her sparkly personality.
Christian Winn is a fiction writer, poet, teacher of creative writing, and producer of literary events living and working in Boise, Idaho. He served as the Idaho Writer in Residence, the State’s highest literary honor, from 2016-19, is the co-founder and Director emeritus of Storyfort, co-founder of To Taste Life Twice, the producer of Campfire Stories, Couch Surfer Artist Series, and Story Forward. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Joyland, Glimmer Train, The Chicago Tribune’s Printer’s Row Journal, and many fine journals. His story collections, NAKED ME, and What’s Wrong With You is What’s Wrong With Me are out in the world, and his novels, AMENDS and CROCODILE, are currently under consideration and will, if the writerly spirits align, be out in the world soon.
Robert Wrigley has published twelve books of poetry, most recently The True Account of Myself As a Bird. He is also the author of a collection of essays, Nemerov’s Door. A former Kingsley Tufts Award winner, a Guggenheim and two-time NEA fellow, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Idaho, and lives in the woods north of Moscow, Idaho, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes.
Email Martha Williams, Director of Programs and Education, for more information.
To Taste Life Twice is a collaboration between The Community Library and Boise-based Story Forward.
