Campfire Stories returns to the Modern for it’s 12th season! Join us under the ginkgos in the Modern courtyard every 2nd Sunday – May to October – to experience this intimate storytelling event. Reservations are available for seating 6:15 – 7pm. Visit themodernbar.com/reserve now to secure a table! Walk-ins welcome.
Campfire Stories is produced by Christian Winn, Rebecca Evans and Tomas Baiza. As usual, we are thrilled for the opportunity to work with this amazing team!
Sunday, August 9
Doors @ 6pm
Show 7 – 9
Host: Christian Winn
Artists: Mitch Wieland, Jennifer Sanders Peterson, Josh Booton
Theme: Gravity
Mitch Wieland
Mitch Wieland’s third novel, The Ghosts of Okuma, will be published in November. Kirkus Reviews calls the novel, “A strange, beautiful, and unexpected exploration of the fallout of family tragedy.” The Ghosts of Okuma has received advanced praise from Anthony Doerr, Jake Adelstein (HBO’s Tokyo Vice), Ann Beattie, Charles Baxter, Rick Bass, and Andrea Barrett.
Mitch Wieland’s first novel, Willy Slater’s Lane, was awarded starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist. The book was optioned for a film. Named Idaho Book of the Year, his second novel, God’s Dogs, was a top finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. His short stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Best of the West, The Yale Review, and two dozen other publications. He’s been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, The Cabin, and the Alexa Rose Foundation. Wieland is the 2026 and 2027 Idaho Writer in Residence.
Wieland is the founding editor of the award-winning Idaho Review—publishing writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and T.C. Boyle—and co-founder and longtime director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Boise State. Now in his thirtieth year at the university, he teaches fiction writing, narrative structure, and publishing classes in the MFA and BFA/BA programs in creative writing.
Jennifer Sanders Peterson
JSP JACOBS is a graduate of the Boise State University creative writing program, and Tin House and Chapman University Workshops. Her work has appeared in publications including Nano Fiction, 100 Word Story, Hawaii Pacific Review, Parent Map, and SmokeLong Quarterly, as well as being nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught fiction writing at Orange Coast College, and now lives and writes back home in Boise, Idaho. You can find her at JSPJacobs.com.
Josh Booton
Josh Booton is a former Michener Fellow in writing at The University of Texas. His poems have appeared widely, in such journals as Free Verse, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Hayden’s Ferry Review and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry: “The Union of Geometry & Ash,” and “The Miraculous Courageous.” His work has received the Texas Keen Prize in Literature and the New Measure poetry prize, as well as grants from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation and the Elizabeth George Foundation. He is also a musician and song writer with the psych rock band Mercy Giant.