Making Meaning at The Edge of Knowing: A Conversation with Kim Barnes & Robert Wrigley In-Person
Join us for a conversation with celebrated Idaho writers Kim Barnes and Robert Wrigley, two award-winning authors who will discuss their work, teaching creative writing at the University of Idaho, and why telling stories matters.
Registration recommended to join us in person. To watch live online (no registration needed): https://vimeo.com/event/5909691. The recording will be available to watch later on The Community Library's Event Archive.
Kim Barnes has authored two memoirs and three novels, as well as essays, poems, and stories. Across genres, her work explores the American West, how landscapes influence identity, faith and the beliefs we inherit, and the expectations we navigate in the roles we are given or invent.
Robert Wrigley has written eight collections of poetry and one book of essays, exploring human proximity to the natural world, especially where beauty, violence, humor, and grief collide. Wilderness is a place of wonder and danger in his works, and death is no abstraction.
The works of these writers (who are also married) pair together beautifully, reckoning with belief and survival, beauty and endurance.
This event opens the annual To Taste Life Twice Seminar - three days of author talks and writing workshop - but all are welcome. You do not need to participate in the seminar to attend this program. Registration for this event is separate.
- Date:
- Thursday, May 7, 2026
- Time:
- 5:30pm - 6:30pm
- Time Zone:
- Mountain Time - US & Canada (change)
- Location:
- John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall
- Campus:
- The Community Library
- Audience:
- Adults
- Categories:
- Lectures & Conversations Seminars & Conferences
Kim Barnes was raised in the logging camps and small towns of Idaho's Clearwater National Forest. Her novels and memoirs have been named among the best books of the year by San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Washington Post, and The Kansas City Star. Her novel A Country Called Home received the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction, and she is a recipient of the PEN/Jerard Award for her first memoir, In the Wilderness, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, WSJ, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. A former Idaho Writer-in-Residence, recipient of an Idaho Governor's Arts Award, and University of Idaho Distinguished Professor Emerita, she lives with her husband, Robert Wrigley, in the mountains of North Idaho.
Robert Wrigley has published twelve books of poetry, most recently The True Account of Myself As a Bird. He is also the author of a collection of essays, Nemerov’s Door. A former Kingsley Tufts Award winner, a Guggenheim and two-time NEA fellow, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Idaho, and lives in the woods north of Moscow, Idaho, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes.