Kim Henderson
Chair, Creative Writing Department
Kim Henderson (M.F.A. University of Montana) taught Creative Writing and Composition at the University of Montana before coming to Idyllwild Arts. She previously taught middle school in Albuquerque and Bloomfield, New Mexico. Her stories have appeared in Conceptions Southwest, and she has work forthcoming in Night Train.

Abbie Bosworth
Acting instructor
Abbie Bosworth is a writer, performer, director, and teacher. She is a Program Director for The Performance Loft Theatre Company in Redlands, where she manages the development of new works, in addition to a youth Shakespeare, and a youth acting program. She has just had one of her own plays, So Many Good Ways To Be Bad, performed by Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance in San Bernardino, and the production, in collaboration with Cal State San Bernardino, will move to The Performance Loft in January 2010. She is also involved in a new play development program at Beverly Hills Play House, in Los Angeles. Abbie has taught theatre for many years, most recently at UC Riverside, and for Riverside Arts Council.

Abbie’s short story, Glass Eye, was published in the 2006 Monsters and Villains edition of CRATE, and her play Left Luggage was performed at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in February 2007.

Abbie gained her B.A. in Theatre from The University of Birmingham in the U.K. and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from U.C. Riverside.

Katherine Factor
Poet-In-Residence
Katherine Factor is teaching Poetry Workshop and a global literature class, Writer as Native/Writer as Witness. She was born in Galesburg, Illinois, and has been involved in the arts since a young age, having attended Interlochen Arts Camp and Interlochen Arts Academy, where she received an Excellence in Poetry upon graduation. She also holds an American Studies degree from Grinnell College and an MFA in Poetry from The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Katherine has been a Teaching Fellow at Augustana College, a recipient of an Iowa Arts Council Grant, a Writer-in-the-Schools for the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Hands on Stanzas program, and the Writer-In-Residence at Interlochen Arts Academy. Her poems appear on KRUI radio programming, in DIAGRAM, Tight Journal, the Colorado Review and elsewhere.

She is excited to be working on her manuscript and a chapbook while in residence at IAA this year.


Andrew Leeson
Literature Instructor
Andrew Leeson (B.A. Hons, English, University of Sussex, England ) Born into a farming family in rural East Yorkshire, England. His B.A. thesis at Sussex 'The Depression in Rural England (1919-1939) - Images and Reality' drew upon his first hand interactions and interviews with country folk of the inter-war years, as well as a review of the depiction of rural life in contemporary fiction of the 1930s. In the Fall of 2007, Andrew will be leading an examination of English novels from Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. In the Fall of 2008, Andrew will be leading an examination of genre in selected English and American novels and stories.