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Ragdale Retreat 2024: Hart House Room 2 or 3 with Julia Fine

$1,600.00 · February 19

Hart House: Evelyn’s Room or Meadow Apt. for Feb. 19-24, 2024.

Start Date

February 19

Location

Ragdale

Instructor

Price

$1,600

Only 2 left in stock

Description

There are THREE options to stay in the Hart House. Purchasing this room is includes a private bathroom in one of these rooms: Evelyn’s Room, or the Meadow Apt.

This is for the February 19-24, 2024 week-long retreat with Julia Fine.


As part of Ragdale’s new series of Master Workshops, StoryStudio is proud to offer this week-long experience.

Part retreat, part mini-residency, this Master Workshop for writers will focus on providing space and community for your work-in-progress. Outside of structured writing time and mini-lessons, the week has been crafted to provide ample writing time to yourself.


The Retreat’s Theme: Trusting Your Instincts
You can read every craft book, follow every formula, and hew to every rule, but at a certain point as writers you will have to rely on your gut feeling. An editor might love a passage in your book, but something in you says it just isn’t hitting. Your intricate outline tells you to take the story in one direction, but a little voice keeps leading you off track. What should you do? How do we honor both the work and our feelings surrounding it?

This week, we’ll hone our instincts so that we can feel comfortable trusting them. We’ll look at how to set up for success with prewriting and prep work that still leaves room for creativity and play, talk candidly about changing gears when something isn’t right, and dig deep to find the truths we’ve been avoiding. Writers should come away from this retreat with a strong sense of how and when to follow their gut, and an assortment of tools to help them do so.


Unlike traditional workshops, this week-long retreat will be more consultation, generative, and discussion based.

There would also be slots during which participants will meet one-on-one with Julia to discuss an element of their writing that they want. There isn’t meant to be pre-reading of work, so this will not be workshop-based, but rather a conversation of your ideas, where you’re at in the process, discussing the publishing industry, etc.

The week begins with dinner on Monday, and all meals are included through Saturday brunch.

*Please note: rooms are limited, and we cannot guarantee you a spot at any of our retreat spots. 

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About Julia Fine

Julia Fine is the author of The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and children.