Teaching-Writer Biographies

Cassie Angley is a published and produced playwright, actress, singer, and theatre-maker. She began acting at age ive in San Francisco with Aunt Lolly’s Shoe String Theater, and her journey in the arts has never stopped. She received her BA in Musical Theater from San Francisco State University then promptly moved to the city of New York where she resided for the next 15 years. In New York she wrote, produced, and performed in many original plays and musicals and worked as a teaching artist. Her South Bronx middle-school students introduced her to poetry and spoken word. She spent many years studying poetry in the spoken word scene. Using the Amherst Writing Method Cassie has led many adult writing workshops. Seven years ago she moved to Boise and began working as a teaching writer at The Cabin while attending Boise State University. In 2017 she received her M.A. Ed, Literacy. Her master’s thesis on ‘readers theater’ was so well received that she founded Readers Theater Works!, a nonproit that strengthens underserved youths’ literacy skills through the discipline of theater.

Ameerah Bader is a Palestinian-Tlingit poet and artist located in Boise, Idaho. They have been writing poems for ten years and drawing for nine. They have been published a handful of times and nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Humor, identity, and tiny moments are at the forefront of Ameerah’s work. They use creativity to learn how to navigate spaces, places, and the sweetness of life. They work within the processes; they appreciate the unseen. Most recently they have been creating stop-motion animations with relief prints, as well as learning sotware development to bring interactivity into their artwork. In 2019 they graduated with two BFAs in printmaking and illustration from Boise State University. Their favorite pastimes are long walks, talks, and drawing all day. 151

Natanya Biskar is an MFA student in iction at Boise State University, where she has taught writing and serves as Associate Editor for The Idaho Review. She is the recipient of a 2021 Alexa Rose Foundation Grant, and the winner of the 2021 Glenn Balch Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Subtropics. Before she entered graduate school, she was a teacher for over ten years.

Colleen Brennan is a freelance writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher with an MA in linguistics. Her stories appear in Writers in the Attic and A Year in Ink. A native Minnesotan, she has lived and worked in San Diego, Boulder, Paris, Bordeaux, and Boise. She is the recipient of a 2018 literary arts grant from the Alexa Rose Foundation.

Natalie Disney recently 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, 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 iction. She teaches writing at BSU and is at work on her irst novel.

Chris Mathers Jackson is a freelance writer and editor, an aspiring novelist, a teacher, a mom, an artist, and a lover of the natural world. Chris received her MA in English Literature from University of Montana in 2005. She taught English Composition at UM from 2003-2006, both during and following completion of her master’s (as a TA and then an adjunct instructor). She worked in the administration of Missoula International School from 2006-2010 before becoming a full-time freelance writer, editor, and graphic designer. Ater several years, she stopped doing design work professionally to focus on her growing family and her passion for the written word. In 2019 she established a book review website (LitReaderNotes.com). In addition to teaching, writing, and editing, Chris enjoys spending as much time outside as possible, adventuring both near and far, with her husband and two daughters.

Playwright, writer and theater maker 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 diference. 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 where she lives in Boise, Idaho, regionally, in NYC and internationally, recently through The Bechdel Group, West of Lenin Theatre, Spark! Creative Works, Oregon Contemporary Theatre, Women’s Theatre Festival, Fargo Moorhead Community Theatre, Trinity Street Players, HomeGrown Theatre, Tomo Suru Players, Thingamajig Theatre Company, Radio Boise, Boise Contemporary Theater and Seven Devils Playwrights Foundry. 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.

Hannah Rodabaugh is the author of With Words: Verse in Concordance, We Don’t Bury Our Dead When Our Dead Are Animals, and We Traced The Shape Of Our Loss To See Your Face. She’s been published in Anti-Narrative Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, ROAR Magazine, Horse Less Review, K’in Literary Journal, and Written River, among others. She’s received grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and the COVID Cultural Commissioning Fund. She’s been an artist-in-residence for the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and Surel’s Place. She is a teaching writer for The Cabin.

Laura Roghaar is a poet, educator, and arts administrator. She serves as the Poetry Out Loud coordinator for Idaho and teaches writing at The Cabin. She holds an MFA in poetry from Boise State and her chapbook of poems, SISTERHOUSE, is out from dancing girl press.

Daniel Stewart is a teaching-writer for The Cabin’s Writers in the Schools program, serving as Writer in Residence at Ada County Juvenile Detention, and Frank Church High, an alternative school, in Boise, ID. The author of the collection The Imaginary World, his poems have appeared in BOAAT, Parentheses, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Scab, Thrush, Yes Poetry, NightBlock, and Graviton Lit, among others.

Tracy Sunderland is a professional writer, director, actor and teacher working in theatre and ilm. She’s written and directed award-winning short ilms and plays for young audiences; her irst feature script was shot in Greece this summer. She is the Artistic Director of the physical art company Migration Theory, and an Associate Artist with Boise Contemporary Theater. She also teaches at Boise State University and The Cabin. Tracy received the 2015 Idaho Commission on the Arts Fellowship in Filmmaking Award and the 2015 Boise State Adjunct Faculty of the Year Award.

Tessy Ward is the author of My Head Can Feel the Vibrating of a Full Heartbeat Through a Chest That Is Neither Hollow Nor Dark, a chapbook from Press 254. She has an MFA from Boise State University and was a Sutherland Fellow in poetry at Illinois State University. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Requited, Rougarou, and Touch The Donkey, among others.