Instructor Bios:

Second Tuesday of the month: Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is primarily a fiction writer living on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado in a Victorian-era farmhouse where her family is surrounded by open sky and century-old cottonwoods. She literally grew up in a bookstore with parents who worshipped all things literature. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she has won several literary awards like Best New Stories from the Midwest and The Orlando Prize for Short Fiction hosted by the foundation, A Room of Her Own. Including the occasional poem, her short stories and essays have been published in journals such as The Los Angeles Review, Bombay Gin, Third Coast, The Adirondack Review, Midwestern Gothic, Hunger Mountain, and most recently Cutthroat. Her first novel Fig debuted from Simon & Schuster in 2015 and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before winning a 2016 Colorado Book Award. She is currently hard at work on her second novel, Roadside Altars, as well as a collection of short stories that circle grief as a connecting theme. When she isn't writing or teaching the craft of writing, she is likely reading, soaking in salt or milk baths, making candles, daydreaming, gardening, or wandering the woods or plains on full moons.

Fourth Tuesday of the month: Malinda Miller is the director of news and media relations at the University of Colorado Boulder, an instructor for the Lighthouse Young Writers Programs, and a visiting artist for Poetry Outloud. She feels most at home at the top of Weston Pass in Colorado or in the Nevada desert where her family has a ranch just off Highway 50, named by Life Magazine as the Loneliest Highway in America. Previously an associate editor at Many Mountains Moving, her poetry and nonfiction has appeared in A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado Life Magazine, the Mountain Gazette, the Coloradan, and others. She has a MFA in poetry from Western State Colorado University and a MA in journalism from the University of Colorado Boulder.