May 8-10, 2025
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 8
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 ANNA-MARIE MCLEMORE | Lecture Hall
Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) is the author of William C. Morris Debut Award Finalist The Weight of Feathers, as well Wild Beauty, Blanca & Roja, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time, and National Book Award longlist selections When the Moon Was Ours, also a Stonewall Honor Book, and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, among others. Their adult debut novel The Influencers will be published in April 2025.
Friday, May 9
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 | Finding the Rhythm of the Wild: Crafting Lyrical Essays with CMarie Fuhrman
This generative and immersive workshop offers a deep look into the craft of lyrical essay writing. CMarie will guide you through the key elements of this evocative form, where close observation of the natural world intertwines with personal reflection and heightened language.
Workshop 2 | Understanding Your Flash: How To Understand and Execute Short Prose Using Models That Publishers Look For, with Sam Berman
Many writers work off emotion or prose in the short form––and those are important elements. But understanding the type of short piece you’re delving into can be just as important. This class will help writers define the style of short prose that works best for you.
Saturday, May 10
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.
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 | Legacy Stories: Writing Beside Your Ancestors with Truth, Beauty, Research, and Intrigue with Christian Winn
In this workshop writers will dive forward into the past, learning how to best tell remarkable and widely engaging stories of intriguing characters and events from their family’s histories. Workshop participants will be asked to read a small selection of texts ahead of time, and to bring an ancestral story to the workshop that they’d like to write on.
Workshop 4 | Prose Poetry and The Power of Place with Erin Rose
This workshop will explore the power of grounding your work in place, not just as a setting or backdrop, but as the actual firestarter for storytelling. We will explore how to create powerful prose poetry that grounds and electrifies your reader, whether you are writing from your window at home or gazing out a train in Thailand.
Workshop 5 | Revision as Wilding: A Generative Writing Workshop with Sarah Sentilles
What if revision wasn’t about taming your words but about setting them free? What if it meant unleashing the wildness of your language and pushing past the boundaries you didn’t even know were there? Join Sarah for a transformative, generative writing workshop where revision becomes an act of discovery. Bring 5-10 pages of your work-in-progress, and together, we’ll release the deep power of your voice.
5:00 – 7:00 p.m. | Reading & Storytelling 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. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. 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 for 2-3 individuals. Participants who sign up will pay Christian directly ($100 per manuscript review – there will be a page/word limit), share a manuscript ahead of time, then meet with him one-on-one during the weekend at an agreed upon time. Email Martha Williams at mwilliams@comlib.org if you are interested in this opportunity.
About the Instructors
Sam Berman is a short story writer who lives in Boise. He has had work published in Forever Magazine, Joyland, Expat Press, Maudlin House, the Northwest Review, The Masters Review, Vlad Mag, HAD, Hobart, CRAFT, Dream Boy Book Club, and Rejection Letters. He was selected as the runner-up in The Kenyon Review’s 2022 Nonfiction Competition as well as a finalist for the 2022 & 2023 Halifax Ranch Prize. He has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Stories. He has forthcoming work in Back Patio Press, X-Ray and The Idaho Review, among many others. In addition to his writing, Sam is also the Director of Storyfort, a literary festival held during Treefort Music Fest every March in Boise.
CMarie Fuhrman is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return (March 2025), Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems and the co-editor of the multiple award-winning Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. She has poetry and nonfiction published or forthcoming in numerous magazines, including Terrain.org, Emergence Magazine, Alta, Northwest Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Northwest, and various anthologies. CMarie is an award-winning columnist for the Inlander and the Director of the Elk River Writers Workshop. CMarie is the Associate Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Western Colorado University, where she teaches poetry and nature writing. CMarie is the host of Colorado Public Radio’s Terra Firma podcast. She is a former Idaho Writer in Residence and lives in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho.
A writer, from the coffee to the grave, Erin Rose is a multi-genre writer exploring the boundaries of her craft. She received her MFA in fiction where she wrote, Vinegar, her first collection of short stories. Stories from this collection have been published in Greensboro Review, Juked, Green Hills, Southern Indiana Review, and have won awards with Glimmer Train and Narrative. She is currently editing her first novel, CULLING, and is busy raising her son and hosting international writing retreats with her company Trust and Travel.
Sarah Sentilles is the author of many books, including Draw Your Weapons, which won the 2018 PEN Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her most recent book, Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn’t Ours, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Idaho Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other publications. She’s had residencies at Hedgebrook and Yaddo. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale and master’s and doctoral degrees at Harvard. She is the co-founder of the Alliance of Idaho, which provides low-cost immigration legal services for families in Blaine County and the surrounding communities.
Christian Winn is a fiction writer, poet, creative nonfiction writer, teacher of creative writing, and sometimes journalist based in Boise, Idaho. He is the author of the short story collections, NAKED ME, and What’s Wrong With You is What’s Wrong With Me, and the forthcoming novels, CROCODILE, and AMENDS. He served as the Idaho Writer in Residence – the state’s highest literary honor – from 2016-2019, and has taught at Boise State University, the College of Idaho, College of Western Idaho, and The Cabin. He is at work on an historical memoir, All This Idaho, which takes a deep-dive into his family’s five-generation storied legacy in the Gem State and beyond.
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.
