Author: CF

Hiring: Education Programs Mgr.

The Cabin are looking for an Education Programs Manager. If you are incredibly detail-oriented, love people, and you’re passionate about growing a community of readers and writers through their Writers in the Schools programs, Summer Writing Camps, and other classes and workshops, they want to hear from you! Know someone who might be interested? Please help us spread the word.

The Cabin are a small, but passionate team that forges community through the voices of all readers, writers, and learners.

The Bones of the World

A STAFF PICK at Treasure Valley’s Rediscovered Books bookshop, this debut novel by Betsy L. Ross released just a month ago.

Dates to note:

  • 2 April – featured in Idaho Press Sunday edition
  • 6 April – featured in Boise Weekly
  • 13 April (4-5:30 MT) book signing at the downtown Boise Rediscovered Books
  • 19 April book signing at The King’s English in Salt Lake City

Written with a trenchant humor, The Bones of the World asks who we become as a result of suffering. Like Jakob, desiring revenge? Like Sariah, seeking the salve of a community that accepts her? Or like Rachel, opening to the ancestral suffering that is her life’s clay, and her role in the swell of its story? A deeply spiritual book, The Bones of the World seeks to locate the place of suffering in a holy world and explores why we must tell these stories that are so often hard to hear.

Available Rediscovered Books bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Indiebound (see links on author’s website.)

Gaming + Writing

SHORT NOTICE ALERT: If you’re interested in writing for games, there’s a two-day retreat starting 31 March in Newberg, Oregon.

Register today for this intensive workshop organized by SOMA Games.

With a combination of group and individual sessions, assignments, and feedback specific to your projects, this two-day retreat will help you learn to start your writing career with the help of seasoned professionals

Food & Family

The 2023 TREASURE VALLEY READS selection is Madhushree Ghosh’s Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family.

A book which received much attention when it was released last year, it was published by University of Iowa Press (further reviews on that page):

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions what it means to belong and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country? 

Join in with Treasure Valley Reads for 2023. Contact your local library for more information on any local events.

Khabaar is available at Rediscovered Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

Photos courtesy of the author’s website.

Star-ring: You!

It’s been a few months, so we thought we’d check back in with organizer Tina Johnson to see how the WRITERS READ program in Star, Idaho is going.

Recall we first wrote about this opportunity for writers in December.

Tina reports that she thinks writers have found the evening to be a good experience — and I am not surprised!

Scheduling update

The program will continue on the third Tuesday of each month through June, at which point it will take a brief break for the summer, and resume in the fall.

  • 18 April
  • 16 May
  • 20 June

This could be a great event for Treasure Valley writers. Learn more about it, including how to sign up, in our earlier posting.

QUICK: Do This Survey

If you’re an independent (self-publishing) author who spends more than half their worktime on writing and publishing, ALLI (the Alliance of Independent Authors) is requesting your input.

Like right now. (Survey closes, I believe, in a matter of days.)

Here’s the survey link: SelfPublishingAdvice.org/survey23

If you want a bit more background, here’s more discussion on ALLI’s Self-Publishing News website.

New Book from Nominee Christi Nogle

This Idaho author whom we’ve previously profiled has just released The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future, a collection of her horror stories “by turns devastating, horrifying, and beyond beautiful,” and drawing references to ‘Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Renegade,” or Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals.”’ (Read more and choose your favorite book vendor.)

And then there’s the Bram Stoker Award® Nomination…

On the Bram Stoker Award® Final Ballot for 2022:

  • Superior Achievement in a First Novel – Beulah (Cemetery Gates Media, 2022)
  • Superior Achievement in an Anthology – with Willow Dawn Becker, Mother: Tales of Love and Terror (Weird Little Worlds, 2022)

Her short stories have appeared in many publications, including PseudoPod, Vastarien, Mooncalves, and Horror Library. Follow her at christinogle.com. Her collections Promise and One Eye Opened in That Other Place are coming from Flame Tree Press in 2023 and 2024.