Lost Horse Press and the Sandpoint Literary Collective are pleased to announce the first event in the Winter Creative Writing Series: The Fiction & Poetry Workshops & Reading featuring Bruce Holbert and Jackson Holbert.

The event will take place Dec. 15 from 1-6 p.m. in the Rude Girls Room of the Sandpoint Library. Workshops will begin at 1 p.m. and the readings will take place at 4:30 pm. All 3 events in the Winter Creative Writing Series are free and open to all creative writers.

Bruce Holbert grew up in the Grand Coulee near the Columbia River: his family was among the first settlers of the country. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. His fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Other Voices, The Antioch Review, Crab Creek Review, The West Wind Review, Cairn, River Lit, The Weber Review, and Word Riot and has won awards from Kirkus Review, the Spur Award, and the 2015 Washington State Book Award. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, New Orleans Review, The Spokesman Review, Quarterly West, RiverLit, Ducts, The Portland Review and The Sante Fe Writers Project, and his poetry in RiverLit, The Bacon Review and The Big Poetry Review. His first novel, “Lonesome Animals” (Counterpoint Press), was a top ten pick in 2012 by The Seattle Times; it was followed by “The Hour of Lead” (Counterpoint Press) in 2014 which won the Washington State Book Award and was named a Kirkus Top-100 pick in 2014. Holbert’s current novel, “Whiskey”, was published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in March 2018.

The fiction workshop topic is on the autobiography of a place: Sometimes setting gets short-changed in a discussion of the elements of writing. As part of the workshop, participants will be reading several samples and working through writing exercises to grease the proverbial skids.

Jackson holbert is originally from eastern Washington and currently lives in Austin, Texas. His poetry has appeared in The Nation, FIELD, and Best New Poets, and his reviews have appeared in Pleiades, Rain Taxi, and the New Orleans Review. He has edited poetry for The Adroit Journal and has read for Bat City Review, Blueshift Journal, and BOAAT. He has received fellowships from Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry and the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin.

The poetry workshop topic will be on breaking the line. The workshop will explore the uses and limitations of lineation in an attempt to uncover what a line break really does to not only the readers’ but the poets’ senses and psyche and how poets can employ them to coax, aid, baffle, guide, and draw in readers.

For additional information, or to register for the workshops, contact Lost Horse Press at losthorsepress@mindspring.com or 208-255-4410.