For Boise literary nonprofit The Cabin, summer is the season for writing camps — week-long literary experiences where children in third through 12th grade adventure across the city and learn the art of screenwriting, poetry, fiction and visual art.
Boise State alum Hillary Colton (MFA, creative writing, 2023) began as the education programs manager at The Cabin soon after receiving her degree from Boise State. Colton facilitates The Cabin’s summer camps, helps coordinate writing workshops and runs Writers in the Schools, a program that connects teaching writers to local schools and juvenile detention centers.
A key feature of Boise State’s creative writing MFA program allows students to teach one writing class per semester to undergraduates. Colton said her experiences as both a student and a teacher at Boise State prepared her to lead The Cabin’s educational efforts.
“Boise State’s MFA program allowed me to live a creative lifestyle and to encourage one to my undergraduate students, which I believe forces a person to foster empathy and think critically about the world,” Colton said.
Double alum Cassie Woodard (BFA, creative writing, 2022; MFA, creative writing, 2025) has also translated her skills from campus to camps. A teaching writer for The Cabin since 2023, Woodard is passionate about fostering playfulness in young writers. She hopes her campers fall in love with writing as a fluid art form.
“A lot of times, if you give kids a prompt without additional scaffolding, they get paralyzed because they’re more worried about making sure they get a good grade or doing it correctly than they are about getting to fully explore,” Woodard said. “It’s fun to be like, ‘Okay, what’s the silliest thing we can do right now?’ as a way to get them to laugh at the process of writing and how fun and silly it can be.”
Colton’s favorite camp is “Picture This,” which mixes creative writing with visual art. The camp culminates in a gallery where friends and family can walk around admiring the campers’ artwork. Campers proudly stand next to their work to answer questions and share their process. Every year, as Colton walks through the gallery, she is elated to see not only the work the campers create, but the accomplishment they feel.
“It can be life-changing to have someone encourage you to keep going with your art,” Colton said. “I believe it takes one person, and I love to think we are making that encouragement more accessible with our camps. Creating is a lifestyle, and art is for life. It doesn’t have to be your whole life, but I hope the kids who come through here feel the transformative power of creation.”