Kurt Zwolfer

Executive Director

Kurt is the Executive Director of The Cabin and works closely with the Board of Directors to manage policy, personnel, and a healthy balance sheet so that The Cabin can continue to serve the community of readers and writers here in Idaho.

He has BA in Rhetoric (a fancy word for creative writing) from The University of Illinois and a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Boise State University. On his path to managing a non-profit, Kurt did stints running an astronomy observatory, directing the education programs at the Idaho State Museum, and tracking and banding birds in Illinois, Hawaii, and the Owyhee desert.

In his spare time you can either find him in a Boise coffee shop reading a book or alternately getting lost on some Idaho back road on the way to explore an obscure canyon or mountain peak. His wife says that he has too many books and she’s probably right. The shelves of his upstairs office are triple stacked and the piles on the floor are almost waist deep. There is a chance he might be found one day crushed under a literary avalanche, a copy of Tristram Shandy in one hand, a glass of spilled port in the other. When you think about it, not a bad way to go.

Hillary Bilinski

Assistant Director

Hillary B. is The Cabin’s Assistant Director. Her key duties include operations leadership, oversight of the development team, and all financial management including accounting, budgeting, reporting, and serving as back up to the Executive Director. She holds a BA in English, a BS in Accounting, an MFA in Writing, and has been on staff at The Cabin since 2014.

In other news, Hillary mommages two young busy bees (ages 3 and 5), with her husband, Kyle, and on the side enjoys quilting, biking, and—of course!—reading.

Adie Bartron

Development Manager

Adie is The Cabin’s Development Manager, leading fundraising, membership, and donor engagement efforts while overseeing marketing and communications strategy. She works closely with donors, sponsors, and community partners to ensure The Cabin continues to thrive as Idaho’s home for literary arts.

Before moving into development, Adie served as The Cabin’s Marketing & Communications Manager, shaping campaigns, digital strategy, and patron engagement. She brings more than a decade of experience in marketing and project management, having worked at Oliver Russell and Stoltz Marketing Group prior to joining The Cabin.

Outside of work, she can usually be found in a hammock reading non-fiction, taking long walks around Kathryn Albertson Park, or negotiating with her two cats, Honey and Juju. She has a questionable talent for making midcentury modern advent calendars and is currently attempting to grow her first native pollinator garden—jury’s still out on whether the plants or the pollinators will cooperate.

Hillary Colton

Education Programs Manager

Hillary manages The Cabin’s education programs, which include Writers in the Schools and Summer Writing Camps. Additionally, with Public Programs Manager Joel Wayne, she co-runs Adult Writing Workshops. She holds a BA in English and an MFA in fiction writing from Boise State University.

Before joining The Cabin, Hillary taught fiction writing at Boise State University and was part of The Idaho Review’s editing staff. She was a 2023 recipient of an Alexa Rose Grant and a finalist in the 2023 American Short Fiction flash contest. You can find her work in Medusa’s Laugh Press and Fractured Literary. She is currently working on her first novel.

Hillary is a proud parent of two human children and a high-energy doggo. In her free time, she enjoys camping, hiking, embroidery, and making amateur pottery (which all serve as forms of procrastination from finishing her novel).

Desmond Fuller

Education Programs Coordinator

Desmond assists Hillary C. in coordinating The Cabin’s summer writing camps, community writing workshops, and Writers-in-the-Schools program. He might even teach one of The Cabin's drop-in workshops from time to time.

He holds a BA in English and Spanish from Portland State University and an MFA in fiction writing from Boise State University. He was the 2023 associate editor of The Idaho Review, a 2023 Sun Valley Writers Conference Fellow, and 2021 Glenn Balch Award Recipient. Desmond has taught creative writing for The Cabin and Boise State University, and currently teaches in Boise State’s First-Year Writing Program. His fiction has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and appears in Gulf Coast, Nashville Review, Grist, Indiana Review, Zone 3, The Florida Review, and other publications.

Some of his favorite books include Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty, and The Quick and The Dead by Joy Williams.

Gen Emerson

Patron Services Manager

Gen handles front line customer service and sales, hires seasonal interns, proofs communications, secures supplies, coordinates building maintenance and schedules building use and rentals. She graduated from Boise State University with an Interdisciplinary degree in Field Sciences, Art & Creative Nonfiction Writing and spent a decade traveling, writing, and conducting wildlife research throughout Idaho before settling down in Boise.

Gen loves to swim, sing, and dance. She can be found reading in the evenings with her beau, talking to orchids, strolling with binoculars, creating colorful messes in the studio, and examining tiny flowers, bugs, and rocks wherever she roams. For Gen, sipping tea over a desert sunrise with the late Byrd Baylor, rubbing Jane Goodall’s tired feet or planting a tree with Wangari Maathai would be the ultimate.

Joel Wayne

Public Programs Manager

Joel manages The Cabin’s public facing programs, helming Readings & Conversations, The Cabin Presents series, Writers in the Attic, and the Boise City Writer-in-Residence. Joel also co-runs adult writing workshops with Hillary Colton, The Cabin’s education programs manager. He holds a BA in English from the University of Montana, a pre-professional certificate in Speech-Language Pathology from Idaho State University, and he attended the MFA program in creative writing at Boise State University.

In addition to his role with The Cabin, Joel produces programs for public radio, including You Know The Place, Reader’s Corner, and Something I Heard, the latter featuring writers sharing short poetry and prose on a monthly theme. Joel's written work can be read in The Independent, The Moth, Salon, and elsewhere. He is the recent recipient of a Fellowship in Performing & Media Arts from Arts Idaho, a facilitator of the Boise chapter of Death Café, and minder to a pair of used kitties, a rescue water rower, and a spouse who’s talked him into ghost tours in a half-dozen states. Some of his favorite authors include Alice Munro, James Baldwin, and Beverly Cleary.

Jordyn Marcroft

Financial & Public Programs Coordinator

Jordyn is the Public Programs Assistant for The Cabin. She has a BFA in Publishing Arts from Lewis-Clark State College. She worked on the college’s literary journal, Talking River, where she acted as President her senior year.

When she isn’t at The Cabin, Jordyn is writing, reading, or baking. She loves exploring the mountains of Idaho with her husband and their three dogs. If given the opportunity to speak with any author, and in this hypothetical of speaking to dead artists, language barriers do not exist, she would have a conversation with Anna Akhmatova about everything from Imperial summers in Tsarskoye Selo to the thirty-year winter of Stalin’s rule. The book that launched her love of literature was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, or maybe The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, but she didn’t want people to think she only reads Russian literature.

Chris DeVore

Grants Manager

Chris has been The Cabin's Grants Manager since 2021 and also serves as the Executive Director of the Mountain Home Arts Council. He is the Editor of The Whistle Pig literary journal and sits on the Board of Directors for Arts Northwest. Originally from Polson, Montana, Chris earned his literature degree from the University of Puget Sound. He resides in Mountain Home, Idaho, with his wife, Hannah, and their youngest daughter, Evelyn. Their son, Torrance, is pursuing a degree in Exercise Science at the University of Jamestown, and their middle daughter, Lillian, is studying Biology at the College of Idaho.

Chris finds it impossible to pick a favorite author or book. Still, he could imagine an ideal evening sitting around a table with Richard Hugo, Anne Lamott, Jess Walter, and Sherman Alexie. They've each written books that make him want to write and be a better person.

“In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.” –Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing