Boise City Writer-in-Residence

Kim Cross is a New York Times best-selling author, journalist, and historian known for cinematic scenes, page-turning narratives, and character-driven stories that guide readers through some complex, nuanced issue. Her first book, What Stands in a Storm, was one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2015 and a finalist in the GoodReads Choice Awards. Her most recent book, In Light of All Darkness, was an Edgar Award finalist and winner of the Truman Capote Prize for Distinguished Work of Non-Fiction. Cross teaches feature writing for Harvard Extension School’s graduate program in journalism, the Larry McMurtry Literary Center in Archer City, Texas, and the Sawtooth Writing Retreat in Idaho. Find her at kimhcross.com, @kimhcross, or writing at Oldspeak in Garden City.

Susan Bruns is an Idaho-based writer whose essays and stories have appeared in The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, LitHub, Under the Gum Tree, The Clackamas Literary Review, and elsewhere. 

She is the recipient of grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and the City of Boise for her writing. In 2020, she was a Surel’s Place Artist in Residence, and she was named a 2021 finalist for the Richard J. Margolis nonfiction writing award for her essay about a sibling’s struggle with mental illness and addiction.

She has an MFA in creative writing from Boise State University and degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Idaho. She has taught dozens of writing workshops to students of all ages and enjoys teaching the craft of writing and encouraging others to write their stories.   

Susan grew up on a farm next to the Snake River Canyon on Idaho’s high desert and writes about how her family battled the harsh conditions, beginning with her grandparents who were homesteaders. She is the mother of two adult children and works for Fahlgren Mortine, an integrated communications agency with offices in Boise. Learn more at susanbruns.com.

Playwright and writer across disciplines Heidi Kraay examines the link between brain and body, seeking empathy with fractured characters. Her work pulls myth, metaphor and monsters together to discover connections across difference. Plays include Unwind: Hindsight is 2020, see in the dark, How to Hide Your Monster, New Eden and Kilgore, as well as co-devised plays, one-acts, plays for young audiences and short plays. Her work has been presented in Boise, regionally, in NYC and internationally, most recently through the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, MING Studios, Mission at Tenth’s podcast Artifact, Boise Contemporary Theater, Storyfort, Climate Change Theatre Action, The Bechdel Group, West of Lenin Theatre, Spark! Creative Works and Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Recent publications include Smith & Kraus and Magical Women Magazine. Heidi holds an MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts from California Institute of Integral Studies and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America. www.heidikraay.com

Natalie Disney earned her MFA in creative writing from Boise State University, where she served as Associate Editor of The Idaho Review. Her work has been published in The Florida Review, The Mississippi Review, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the PEN America Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She is a recipient of the 2017 Glenn Balch Award for fiction. She teaches writing at BSU and is at work on her first novel.