Our Faculty & Workshop Leaders
Ammi Midstokke, FNTP, MBA
Retreat Faculty: Non-fiction, Craft-Development
Ammi Midstokke grew up in the forests of North Idaho, where spring trilliums and fall firewood left their mark on her soul.
Ammi has been an outdoor columnist and feature writer for the Spokesman Review for over a decade, as well as a regular contributor to other publications including Out There Outdoors magazine, The Sandpoint Reader, and more.
Ammi’s book, All the Things: Mountain Misadventure, Relationshipping, and Other Hazards of an Off-Grid Life, is being followed with a memoir about how she learned to chop wood and make bad choices in the first place—and also, where she learned to love nature. Her forthcoming essay, Rosemary in Winter, will be released in the 2026 edition of The Limberlost Review.
Ammi has led retreats dedicated to nourishment, writing, and wellness for over a decade. She brings a trauma-informed background as a practitioner, with a spirit of deep listening to support others in finding and following the threads of their stories. She is a Developmental Editor for both small and large projects, and is frequently called on to draft breakup texts.
When Ammi is not writing, or teaching, she is likely getting lost in the wilderness. She serves on an excess of non-profit boards dedicated to social causes, and lives in the foothills of the Selkirk Mountains with her husband, and a fluctuating animal-to-human ratio.
Lyzette Wanzer, MFA
Retreat Faculty: Lyrical Essay, Microfiction, Professional-Development
Lyzette Wanzer’s work appears in over thirty literary journals, books, and magazines. Library Journal named her book, TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives (Chicago Review Press 2022), a Top 10 Best Social Sciences Book. Publishers Weekly featured the book in Fall 2022. Lyzette is a contributor to Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth From the Margins (Wayne State University Press 2023), Civil Liberties United: Diverse Voices from the San Francisco Bay Area (Pease Press 2019), and the multi-award-winning The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (Wyatt-MacKenzie 2012).
A National Writers’ Union and Authors Guild member, Lyzette’s work has been supported with grants from Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Black Artist Foundry, The Awesome Foundation, and California Humanities, a National Endowment for the Humanities partner.
Lyzette has been awarded writing residencies at Blue Mountain Center (NY), Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts (NE), Playa Summer Lake (OR), Horned Dorset Colony (NY), Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow (AR), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, PlySpace (IN), The Anderson Center (MN). Lyzette has been named a 2023-2025 Lucas Arts Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center.
Chef Elizabeth Gibb
Retreat Nourishment: Home-cooked meals with heart and soul
For more than twenty years, Elizabeth has been immersed in the world of food. As a chef, caterer, and sustainability advocate, she specializes in crafting meals using whole foods and locally sourced ingredients, while supporting a variety of dietary needs.
Throughout her career, she has explored the question, “What actually is food?”
Her answer, forming over years of contemplation and experience, is that food holds a unique place for each of us. It is love, life, fuel, inspiration, a necessity. It creates bonds, memories, and connections. It polarizes people internally and with each other. It is layers of systems that intertwine the strata of finance, politics, and culture, while negotiating with Mother Earth.
Elizabeth’s path has touched on most aspects of these systems: planting seeds, harvesting vegetables, producing products to sell everywhere from grocery stores to high end restaurants. She advocates for food and industry worker sustainability, food access, and food waste reduction. Her favorite meals are ones requiring hands to eat—food should give all your senses a chance to play.
Elizabeth pours her heart and soul into every meal, because she understands that food can nourish more than the body. She creates menus that keep us nurtured and warm, giving us space to inspire our writing, showcase our individuality, and support each other in this journey.
Our Workshop Leaders
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Chris Paradis
Songwriting
Chris has been teaching, performing, writing, and recording music professionally since 2010 though all those pursuits began when he first picked up his cousin's guitar in 1995. Since then, Chris has taught students of all ages (5 to 86), backgrounds and musical interests on acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, mandolin, electric bass, ukulele and drums.His teaching days began in the Boston, MA area before relocating to Sandpoint, ID in 2015. He has released 6 albums of original music since 2020 under the moniker Waterhouse (previous bootlegs exist) and has given hundreds of performances during that time. The driving passion behind it all, is his desire to connect with people from all walks of life and to elevate their experiences through music.
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Kelly Price
Art & Words
A lifetime artist, Kelly Price initially studied illustration at USU in Logan, Utah. 1979-1982, further exploring her creative reach in the years to follow. Her many mediums include soft sculpture, ink with watercolor, acrylic, and silk painting. She is currently illustrating her first children’s book.Kelly has created many permanent installations for several pediatric establishments such as Seattle Children’s Hospital, WSU Medical Hospital and Odessa Brown, all in the Seattle area.
Showings of her fine art have included:
~ CAH (Center for Arts and History) in Lewiston, Idaho (2015)
~ Tin Man Gallery in Spokane, WA (2010-2013)
~ Evans Brothers Coffee Roasters in Sandpoint, Idaho (2016)Kelly has led many silk painting and children’s craft workshops while in residence at the Music Conservatory of Sandpoint, inspiring others in their own love of art.
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Sarah Rooney, MFA
Poetry & Verse
Sarah Rooney is a non-binary poet who created “Speakeasy” Open Mic in March of 2022. They co-founded “Foray for the Arts,” a monthly, traveling multidisciplinary event series in Spokane with Greg Bem in January of 2024. Sarah received their MFA in poetry at Eastern Washington University in June of 2025.
Mother Media, their first chapbook, was published in October, 2023 and they are working on releasing their second collection, Egos Mythos. When they are not facilitating poetry workshops throughout the community, you can find them hosting karaoke or organizing community events. They have performed at Emerge, Terrain, Foray, and at local community colleges. Their work has been published in Croak Magazine, Coop Zine, and Spokane's "In The Neighborhood."
On our pronouns: We introduce ourselves here with the pronouns we use on a day-to-day basis. If you’d like to learn about why pronouns matter, find out more here.