Writers in the Schools (WITS) by The Cabin.
WITS INSPIRES STUDENTS TO WRITE
Writers in the Schools employs professional local writers – poets, fiction writers, playwrights, and non-fiction writers – to teach semester or school-year long writing residencies in schools, juvenile detention centers, and community learning centers. Through active, imaginative writing experiences under the mentorship of The Cabin’s teaching-writers, our goal is to engage students and classroom teachers in the pleasure and power of reading and writing.
WITS HELPS SCHOOLS MEET THEIR GOALS
Centering on a commitment to reinforce local and national learning initiatives, WITS engages students in the full arc of the writing process – reading literary models, discussing text complexity, learning craft and structure, drafting writing, revising writing, and distributing writing – and bolsters efforts to meet the K-12 common core standards in reading, writing, language, and speaking and listening.
To learn more about bringing a Cabin teaching-writer to your classroom, please contact Laura Roghaar at (208) 331-8000 or [email protected].
THE CABIN PROVIDES:
Writers in the Schools employs professional local writers – poets, fiction writers, playwrights, and non-fiction writers – to teach semester or school-year long writing residencies in schools, juvenile detention centers, and community learning centers. Through active, imaginative writing experiences under the mentorship of The Cabin’s teaching-writers, our goal is to engage students and classroom teachers in the pleasure and power of reading and writing.
WITS HELPS SCHOOLS MEET THEIR GOALS
Centering on a commitment to reinforce local and national learning initiatives, WITS engages students in the full arc of the writing process – reading literary models, discussing text complexity, learning craft and structure, drafting writing, revising writing, and distributing writing – and bolsters efforts to meet the K-12 common core standards in reading, writing, language, and speaking and listening.
To learn more about bringing a Cabin teaching-writer to your classroom, please contact Laura Roghaar at (208) 331-8000 or [email protected].
THE CABIN PROVIDES:
- One local, professional, creative writer to conduct a school-year or semester-long artist residency in the genre of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, playwriting or a combination
- The basic residency provides 24 in-school teaching hours; 24 curriculum planning and student feedback hours, and one planning meeting
- Planning, training and evaluation support from The Cabin’s Program Director
- The production of a classroom anthology featuring one piece of writing from each student
- A professionally produced anthology featuring selected writing from each WITS school
- An on-site culminating event and invitations to a program-wide anthology showcase
- Complimentary tickets for teachers and students (high school only) to one Readings & Conversations event (when available)
- Financial assistance from The Cabin’s grant writing team
- Partial scholarships for teachers to attend professional development workshops
- Partial scholarships for students to attend Idaho Writing Camps
Our Teaching-Writers
Erin Belair is an MFA in creative writing candidate in her first year at Boise State University. Before coming to Boise, she received a BA in creative writing from UC Irvine, was the lifestyle editor and feature story writer for Local Magazine, and taught poetry to first generation bilingual students in Santa Ana, California. She is a teaching-writer at Liberty Elementary.
Amanda Bennett grew up in Connecticut. She doubled majored in Chemistry and Creative Writing at Hamilton College in upstate New York. She received her MFA in fiction from Boise State University, where she now teaches composition and writing courses. Her most recent published work can be found in the current Spring Issue of Confrontation. She is currently working on a novel (of sorts) set in Portland, Oregon, and, of course, Connecticut. She is a teaching-writer at White Pine Elementary and West Canyon Elementary.
Katie Fuller is an MFA student in poetry at Boise State University. She
holds an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Maine where she served on the editorial staff of the journals Stolen Island
and Paideuma. Her poems can be found in the collaborative chapbook
Meconium, SP CE, and are forthcoming in WSQ. She enjoys the
mountains and the sea. She is a teaching-writer at the Idaho Distance Education Academy.
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Adrian Kien grew up in Elko, Nevada and Missoula, Montana. He teaches poetry at Boise State University. He has authored several chapbooks and collections of poetry, most recently, The Caress is a Letter of Instruction. He likes to speak French, ride his bicycle and make dinner for his wife, the painter, Kelly Packer. He is a teaching-writer at Rose Hill Elementary and Seven Oaks Elementary.
Playwright Heidi Kraay also writes poetry,
fiction and nonfiction. Selected work is published in
Bewildering Stories, Anastamoo, The 5-2, The Zodiac Review and others. Plays
have been developed and/or produced locally, regionally and in NYC. She loves
bridging genre gaps and teaching through Boise Contemporary Theater and The
Cabin. She a teaching-writer at Roosevelt Elementary,
Seven Oaks Elementary and White Pine Elementary. Heidi Naylor teaches writing and literature at Boise State
University. She has published essays and articles in The Washington Post, On
Being, Boise Journal, Art Idaho and more. Her fiction has appeared in Sunstone
Magazine, The Chariton Review, The Idaho Review, New Letters Magazine and more.
She received a fellowship in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts
in 2010 and was nominated for Best New American Voices in 2007. She is the teaching-writer at Marian Pritchett High School.
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Daniel Stewart, a teaching-writer for WITS and Summer Writing Camps since 1999, is the author of a collection of poems, The Imaginary World. A variety of print and online publications have featured his poems, most recently Prairie Schooner, Skidrow Penthouse, Educe, and Thrush Poetry Journal. He is the teaching-writer at Frank Church High School, Ada County Juvenile Detention and Boys & Girls Club Garden City.
Brady Udall is the author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Letting Loose the Hounds and The Lonely Polygamist. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Esquire and elsewhere. He teaches writing at Boise State University, and was appointed Writer-in-Residence of Idaho in 2010. He is the teaching-writer at Southwest Idaho Juvenile Detention.
A seventh generation Idahoan, Kerri Webster is the author of two collections of poetry, Grand & Arsenal (University of Iowa, 2012), and We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (University of Georgia, 2005). Recipient of awards from the Whiting Foundation, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America, she teaches at BSU, CWI, and for the Cabin as a Writer in the Schools. She is the teaching-writer at Victory Academy.
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