It’s with great pleasure that I can announce that my lovely yoga teacher/masseuse/sound bath musician/brilliant caterer and all round lovely person, Jennie Dodd, joins us as a host of some bespoke weeks! More info on this link – takes you to the post with details about the very first week which has an exceptional offer […]

Building a network and broadening a normally solitary activity into something a bit more social, by going on a writing retreat, can sometimes be the breakthrough many of our authors need. A supportive environment and reassurance is in the months that follow, especially when rejections start to come through.  Subsequent conversations with newfound buddies are […]

Blog by Jane Smillie, guest at the Micro-Memoirs Retreat, August 2025 Just back from a residential micro memoir writing course at Sheepwash, expertly tutored by Margarita Gokun Silver, I came across this letter. Good to know that literary giants have had the thumbs down before achieving success.Another reminder how hard it can be to get […]

(UPDATE: currently an ensuite in the house available for the Just Write retreat in November. See below.) AMAZING NEWSWell it’s finally happened, those of you who have been coming here know about the book I’ve been writing for what seems like forever. ‘French or Dutch’ – based on real events 100 years ago in the […]

“When Stephanie Land penned her essay “I spent 2 years cleaning big houses – what I saw makes me never want to be rich,” for Vox, she never thought it was going to net her a book deal, and later, a Netflix series. But it did! Or Lauren Hough, the author of the viral Huffington Post essay “I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The […]