Upcoming Writing Retreats
April 5 - 11, 2026
Arcachon, France
Sadeqa Johnson &
Julie Cantrell
Cultivating Creativity:
Unlock Your Voice
Escape to the beautiful coastal village of Arcachon with Julie and Sadeqa! In this unique opportunity, you’ll join not one, but two, bestselling authors for a creative deep dive south of Bordeaux. Every day our group of sixteen women writers will gather for a three-hour workshop in one of our two waterfront villas. Perched in this historical bayside community, the workshops will offer a combination of morning meditations, generative writing exercises, and roundtable critiques in a close-knit and nurturing environment. We’ll also be tackling five core craft skills: Character, Plot, World Building/Setting, Dialogue, and Revision. We’ll vary the groups each day to keep the energy fresh, and each student will meet with either Julie or Sadeqa for a one-hour private session. All genres are welcome.
Christine Sneed
Writing Retreat
Lightning on the Page
Each morning our group of 8 writers will meet for three hours of both generative writing and workshop, along with discussions addressing practical aspects of the writing life. We’ll aim for the flexible goal of writing vibrant new work—either stand-alone or part of a longer project—by the end of our week together. Each student will meet with Christine for an individual one-hour session.
All genres—fiction, nonfiction/memoir, poetry, and one-acts/scripts—and all levels of experience are welcome.
April 26 - May 2, 2026
Bordeaux, France
May 24 - May 30, 2026
Bordeaux, France
SOLD OUT
Susan Rich
Writing Retreat
Taking Flight: Travel Poetry (& Memoir) with Humans and Birds
Ignite the Spark
with Sarah Penner
Fiction writers of all genres are welcome for this week-long retreat in the high alpine village of Chamonix, France.
Our goal for the week is to unlock your story’s spark. With views of Mont Blanc from our chalet, we’ll cozy up with our pens and notebooks to explore your story from fresh angles. We’ll deepen characterization, create immersive settings, and strategize backstory in a way that captures your reader. By the end of the week, you’ll have written or revised several key scenes or chapters within your story.
May 31 - June 6, 2026
Chamonix, France
SOLD OUT
June 7 - 13, 2026
Chamonix, France
A Writing Retreat
with Janet Benton
Your Book as a Meaningful Journey:
Strengthen Your Manuscript and Your Pitch
The stories we write, both fiction and nonfiction, have a mysterious and powerful hold on us. Through them, we can discover and convey hard-won knowledge and the commitments of our hearts. But how do we make others care? How do we make the work’s journey meaningful enough to get agents, editors, and readers to bond with it? We pay close attention to every choice.
Where does your book start and end? Why? What are key stepping stones? What atmosphere do your words create? How can you maintain tension—a reader’s need to know? Each choice guides readers to what you want them to experience. With greater awareness of aspects large and small, you can see what to trim and how to strengthen what remains.
Miranda Cowley Heller
Writing Retreat
LOSING YOUR MIND
In an intimate and beautiful setting, along with seven others writers, this will be a week dedicated to unlocking your deepest voice by learning tools that help you let go of your “intellectual” writer — embracing your individual creative instincts free from Losing your “Mind” the constraints of what so many of us are taught good writing “should” be. The classes will experiment and generate work across a variety of genres. Each day will include three hours of class where we will experiment with tools, fresh techniques, readings, and writing prompts. Afternoons will be for working on your own material or craft exercises assigned by me wherever you find the most inspiration— whether writing at a desk, a dining table, a local cafe, or sitting looking out at the Mont Blanc.
June 14 - 20, 2026
Chamonix, France
September 6 - 12, 2026
Chamonix, France
Matthew Klam
Writing Retreat
As writers, we aim to set the world on fire. But the work itself is another thing. It emerges slowly, one line at a time. A good workshop will get you started and help you persevere, will help you reignite the spark when you’ve lost inspiration. For five days we’ll gather together to write and read and discuss essays, chapters of memoirs, long and short fiction. We’ll explore writing that is confessional, disruptive, funny, intimate, and intense. We’ll spend the bulk of our time carefully reading and examining your writing in a helpful, constructive manner. In our discussions we’ll debunk some of the mystery, as we engage the part that creates, that fills the page with words, that doesn’t look back or edit or second guess.
Storytelling Sojourn
with Jamie Ford
Each morning we’ll gather for three hours to workshop beginning chapters, opening scenes, and examine the types of contracts we make with readers on page one. We’ll discuss writing vs. storytelling, ways of immersing the reader, and how to bank and spend emotional currency.
Each participant will also have a 1-hour private session. All genres are welcome in this generative workshop.
September 6 - 12, 2026
Arcachon, France
September 13 - 19, 2026
Chamonix, France
Writing Retreat with
Lauren Ling Brown &
Meredith Jaeger
Join Lauren and Meredith in Chamonix, France, for a week-long writing retreat at an alpine chalet. In this unique opportunity, you’ll join not one, but two, bestselling authors to unlock your creative potential. Each day, our group will gather for a three-hour workshop, where we’ll discuss how to create cinematic writing: engaging the reader’s senses through vivid, active description and purposeful pacing. Our craft talks will focus on how to “hook” readers, plotting techniques, three-act structure, the importance of setting, character development, building tension and “raising the stakes.”
A Writing Retreat
with Leslie Zemeckis
The writing journey can be daunting. Where do you start? How do you start? Where are you going? Join me in learning simple steps to get you started and how to make what you write better. We will analyze what makes a story stand out. How to hook your readers so they keep turning the page. Everyone has a unique voice and I will help you find yours. During this retreat we will dive into the most important question for a writer to know; what is your story about? I will help you find all the layers of depth, the details that make writing evocative, and the fun in crafting the story you want to tell. And we will do it in the most enchanting, inspirational setting – the majestic French Alps.
September 20 - September 26, 2026
Chamonix, France
September 21 - 27, 2026
Bordeaux, France
Marissa Stapley
Writing Retreat
Find your craft. Hone your voice. Rewrite your future.
The Story You Were Meant to Tell. Join bestselling author Marissa Stapley for an unforgettable week in Bordeaux, France, where inspiration grows wild amid vineyards and stone, the stories deepen, and your novel finds its voice. In daily three-hour workshops, we’ll explore the art of storytelling with a focus on character, structure, emotional resonance, and narrative momentum. Whether you’re halfway through a manuscript or starting from a spark, you’ll gain the tools and confidence to take your work to the next level. With generative writing sessions, feedback circles, and intimate conversations about writing and publishing, this is more than a workshop—it’s a turning point. Come with a dream, leave with direction, clarity, and community.
A Writing Retreat
with John Claude Bemis
Join us in Chamonix, France, for a week-long writing retreat at an alpine chalet. Whether developing an idea, drafting new pages, or revising an existing manuscript, this retreat will offer guidance, focused writing time, and a small, supportive group of fellow writers.
Each day will begin with a three-hour workshop, where participants will explore techniques to make each scene and every page more captivating to readers. You’ll learn new ways to create an immersive writing voice with point-of-view, how to micro-plot scenes into strong arcs, and how to weave together your characters’ interior lives with their external struggles. Each participant will have a one-hour private consultation with John.
September 27 - October 3, 2026
Chamonix, France
SOLD OUT
October 3 - 10, 2026
Chamonix, France
A Writing Retreat
with Emily Colin & Julie Artz
Join us in Chamonix, France, for a week-long writing retreat at an alpine chalet. Whether developing an idea, drafting new pages, or revising an existing manuscript, this retreat will offer guidance, focused writing time, and a small, supportive group of fellow writers.
Each day will begin with a three-hour workshop, where participants will explore techniques to make each scene and every page more captivating to readers. You’ll learn new ways to create an immersive writing voice with point-of-view, how to micro-plot scenes into strong arcs, and how to weave together your characters’ interior lives with their external struggles. Each participant will have a one-hour private consultation.
David Rocklin
Writing Retreat
WE’LL FIND IT TOGETHER
We will spend three inspiring hours each day writing, inside or poolside. Writers looking to find their voice, start something new or deepen their current work will explore generative exercises, engage in craft talks on making their narratives vivid, and examine how context lies at the heart of character and place – whether in fiction or memoir.
We’ll create a space for your voices and an atmosphere of connection and community. Writers can encounter so many seemingly impossible mountains standing in the way of realizing their dream, but the strength to make your way is already in you.
October 4 - 10, 2026
Provence, France
October 11 - 17, 2026
Provence, France
Writing Retreat with
Carol Weston
FIND YOUR VOICE IN PROVENCE
A week in Provence? Oui, s’il vous plaît!
Immerse yourself in the sounds, smells, flavors, and sights of Provence while honing your craft, making friends, feeling pampered, and having fun. This retreat is open to writers of all levels, whether you’re working on essays, fiction, or memoir. Each morning, Carol Weston will offer three prompts to get your creativity going. We will write in bursts, share our work in ways that are constructive and inspiring. We’ll talk about word choice, characters, structure, and what makes readers want to turn the page. Carol will offer hour-long one-on-one consultations to help you make the most of your time and talent—and tell the stories only you can tell.
Get ready for an unforgettable, life-changing week.
A Writing Retreat with
John Kenney
LIGHT IN THE DARK. FINDING HUMOR IN STORIES OF GRIEF.
Immerse yourself in the sounds, smells, flavors, and sights of Provence while building a new writing community, deepening your craft, making friends, and having fun! This retreat is open to writers of all levels. Participants will engage in exercises to help them find their voices and uncover the stories only they can tell. Workshops will focus on mining our emotions to make use of the joys, questions, and fears we already hold inside, as well as unleashing our imaginations in search of emotional truths we don’t yet understand. Each workshop will include a craft lesson, a writing exercise, and time to share our work. Julie will make herself available for one-on-one consults with participants to cover writerly topics ranging from feedback on workshop assignments to writing query letters or pitching your work for publication.
October 18 - 24, 2026
Arcachon, France
October 25 - 31, 2026
Arcachon, France
A Writing Retreat with
Emily Franklin & Dawn Tripp
DETAILS, TRANSITIONS, & CREATIVE DESIRE
What’s at the emotional core of your work? Bring your poetry, fiction, essays, or novel excerpt to this warm, welcoming week of generative exercises, literary conversations, and workshops enplein air. We will explore how transitions—empty nesting, job changes, new roles at home or work, loss, and new relationships—can fuel our creativity and connect us to the next phase of engagement with life and with writing. We will share techniques to harness the details, description, and emotional power often hidden in our ideas or on the page. You’ll learn new ways to breathe life into your writing practice and the dynamic creative work of revision. We will explore how poetry can help us write fiction and how fiction can help us write better poems. Two bestselling authors with expertise in literary and historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction essays/memoir will create a relaxed, inclusive environment in which writers can tap into their creative desires and harness that power on the page.
“What a lovely experience from start to finish. Everything was so well done for us with such consideration for each of us. The view from my room was spectacular!”
– Mercilee Jenkins