* Retreat postponed to Spring 2022 *
“I believe now that I can, with work and practice, become published, and I understand how to move forward in my craft. I will definitely attend a Cagibi retreat again, it was the highlight of my year!” —past Cagibi retreat participant
It is (finally) official! Since June 9th, vaccinated Americans are allowed to visit France. Are you ready? If so, we are happy to let you know that it is still possible to register for the Cagibi 2021 Writing Retreat in Provence.
As the French say, Mieux vaut tard que jamais!
The deadline has been EXTENDED to June 20th, 2021.
What we offer: our mission is the same as when we first planned it for 2020: to offer writers a space to reconnect with their creativity, connect with fellow writers from all over the world, and begin a new project or workshop an ongoing one. Food, lodging, and workshop are included. We will workshop in the morning, and allow for lots of free (and private if preferred) time to pursuit your own writing while taking advantage of the gorgeous premises or the cafes in Lourmarin, a quaint village within walking distance. There will also be optional daily activities such as yoga, hiking, visiting nearby vineyards, and more. Most meals will be served on premises, so that we can further socialize and connect with one another.
Connecting through creativity and community: what a precious opportunity, especially after all that we have been going through in 2020.
Will you join us?
DATES: Sept 26 – October 3 2021
MINIMUM PARTICIPANTS REQUIRED: 12
DEADLINE FOR DEPOSIT: ***NEW DEADLINE: JUNE 20, 2021 (All deposits will be refunded if any Covid-related traveling restrictions are reinstated.)
This retreat is for writers who want to develop the skills and discipline needed to tell a story, regardless of the form they have chosen to work in. Whether working on a novel, autofiction, memoir, poetry, poetic-memoir, or other creative nonfiction our study sessions and writing practice are training ground for effective, compelling storytelling.
The workshop will take place in the morning from 9 to 12 noon, from Monday to Friday. The first hour of the workshop will consist in short sessions focused on specific aspects of craft or narrative techniques we will discuss by engaging in close reading with works by master writers. This will be followed by writing prompts so that participants can practice using these techniques in their own writing. These sessions are meant to be both warm-up for the day and generative, and will be optional.
Then, we will workshop writing from participants’ current projects, with a focus on offering clear and productive group feedback centered around one goal: how to find and use the emotional truth of one’s raw, personal experience and transform it into material for story, whether the form is poetry, memoir, or fiction. How do you use the life you’ve lived, the experiences that shaped you? What if rather than just telling your story, you want the freedom to explore it without the constraint of “the facts”? How can you write truthfully about your life while rejecting memoir’s insistence of remaining faithful to “the truth”? These questions, whether you write autofiction, memoir, poetry, or fiction, are crucial to finding the heart of the matter in a poem, personal essay, or short story, and will frame our workshop approach.
Guidelines for submitting your writing for these workshops will be provided to participants after registration. The schedule of when works will be individually workshopped will be arranged prior to the retreat, with the pages emailed ahead of time for the participants to print and bring.
Saturday morning will be reserved for rehearsal practice for whoever wishes to participate in our Saturday Night Reading Event, which will be open to the public.
The workshops will be led by Jennifer Lang and Sylvie Bertrand.
Jennifer Lang‘s essays have appeared in Under the Sun, Ascent, Hippocampus, and forthcoming in Consequence, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays nominee, she holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and serves as Assistant Editor for Brevity. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she now lives in Tel Aviv, where she runs Israel Writers Studio and searches for a special home for her first memoir in vignettes.
Sylvie Bertrand is a native French speaker, born in Montreal and based in Brooklyn. Her stories and poems have appeared in Peregrine Journal, Epiphany, Cleaver Magazine, december, among others. Her fiction has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and received a Pushcart Special Mention; in 2019 she was a finalist for the Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. She holds a MA in Anthropology from Princeton University, and teaches memoir and creative writing workshops at the Writers Studio in NYC. She is the co-founding editor of Cagibi.
To bring you this retreat we have partnered with Artecom, a Canadian company based in France. Artecom is managing registrations and is there to support you with any logistical questions or needs. In-depth retreat details and registration may be found on Artecom’s website:
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