Registration opens to the public on Thursday, June 8!
get on early notice list here:
January 28-February 3
All details coming soon!!
Write Your Flash Novel in Costa Rica opens Thursday! Get Early Access:
Tag: Costa Rica
Did someone say Write Your Book in Costa Rica in 2024??
Registration opens in May but you can get on the
early notice list here:
January 28-February 3
All details coming soon!!
Know anyone who could use a half-price writers’ retreat? Special deal on Writing Wild in Costa Rica!
Limited-Time Opportunity for a Half-Price Flash Fiction Retreat in Costa Rica, March 2020!
With the purchase of one all-inclusive retreat package, get a 2nd one for half off!
Invite a friend to join you for our Writing Wild in Costa Rica Retreat March 21st-27th & gift them with the half-priced fee (as low as $725 all-inclusive) OR register together and split the savings! We can only extend this deep discount to the first TWO pairs of writers to register. If interested, act soon!
Your all-inclusive fee includes:
- Six nights accommodation
- Three Delicious, Ayurvedic Meals Per Day
- ALL workshops + One on One Consultations
- Airport Pick-Up & Drop-Off
- Final Night Celebration & Salon Reading Under the Stars
“This retreat EXCEEDED all my expectations. Gorgeous location, perfect weather, delicious food & friendly, accommodating staff. I’m a flash fiction writing newbie and learned so much from everyone. I will carry the knowledge and wonderful memories with me forever!” ~Lucy Merklee
More About Writing Wild in Costa Rica
All-Inclusive Fees & Accommodations
Register / Request More Information
We’ve also just opened registration for our 3rd annual Colorado Retreat. Check it out: High Altitude Inspiration in the Great American West for August 19th-23rd!
Poetry & Journaling One’s Way into Story: A Conversation with Lisa Trigg
(Note: Lisa will now be joining us in France for our French Connection Retreat in June.)
Hi Lisa, first question, have you ever visited Costa Rica before?
Never been to Costa Rica but it’s been on my list for years. I’m attracted to the geography, the people and their politics. If I can learn Spanish, I will consider retiring there. If I retire.
What are you most looking forward to in our upcoming retreat?
Learning something new about writing/flash. Getting inspiration, tips. Sight seeing/R & R, meeting new and interesting people.
What do you find yourself writing about? What themes and/or writerly obsessions?
I’m presently engaged in planning/writing a series of “cycle stories” in the fashion of Ellen Gilchrist about the life and times of a young to elderly lesbian named Hazel Currie whom I’ve been collecting notes about since I was about 20. I have drafts of 2 stories from that series and notes on more. I think there might actually be 2 books worth of short stories, but one never knows how these things turn out. I dictate notes on Hazel in a Day One journal throughout the day as I have thoughts about her.
I have a small series of flash stories that come to me as I do my work with people with serious mental illness in crisis. These have social justice themes and are about hurt, broken people making their way in this world. I’m very careful about writing these stories because I do not want to turn their lives in to entertainment, and because some of the stories are so distinctive that I have to be careful about violating HIPAA laws. I work with a writer/writing coach who is also a trauma expert/therapist, Kay Morgan, PhD, to help me navigate these issues. So far, I’m more worried about it than she is. The best of those stories, “A Day’s Work,” I had published in a little ezine junoesq which is now defunct, It’s about a homeless mentally ill man, Janik Muro, who works various strategies to get off the street for a few days because someone is killing homeless people in the camps around the city. It has morphed into a not bad short story that needs more work and gave me ideas for a novel based on the main character in the story. That project is fermenting and I’m not actively working on him right now except for the little notes I dictate about him into my Day One journal when thoughts occur to me.
I might be obsessed with using technology to organize my very busy thoughts about my characters.
Respond to this quote:
“When I think of the wisest people I know, they share one defining trait: curiosity. They turn away from the minutiae of their lives-and focus on the world around them. They are motivated by the desire to explore the unfamiliar. They are drawn toward what they don’t understand.” Dani Shapiro
Great quote and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I hope someone says this about me someday!
Would you like to share something about yourself that is interesting, moving, weird, funny, unusual?
I’m a lifelong writer/journaler, having focused on poetry in the past, but for the last 1-2 years exploring fiction, which was my original goal. I was derailed into poetry after a Centrum Workshop where 7 beautiful woman poets performed their work each morning back in the days when they held the performances first thing in the morning. When I got home, I was thinking in verse and wrote poetry for many years. I think that writing poetry improved my language and has made me a better fiction writer. I have many pets, am an avid ballroom dancer, and my idea of camping is Motel 6. Still wake up excited to get to my job every morning and don’t plan to ever retire. I once had a dream where I was disembodied, out among the stars, with a spotlight on me, and a deep voice boomed “And Lisa Trigg is the Homecoming Queen of the Universe!” I’m pretty sure that Hazel is going to have this precise dream sometime during the travails of her 20s.
Costa Rica Wrap Up and Announcement!
What follows are our reflections on our 2019 Writing Wild in Costa Rica Retreat. Spaces are available for Writing in the Blue Zone, our return to Peace Retreat in March, 2020. Please read and consider joining us in this very special place:
Kathy’s thoughts:
“I wondered about the explorers who’d sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.” ~Jodi Picoult
I thought of this quote on the flight to Costa Rica, wondering what lie ahead for us. Though Costa Rica is hardly the “end of the world,” I’d never been there before. I’d only seen pictures. Pictures and descriptions of the country and of Peace Retreat. Nancy and I took a huge leap of faith for ourselves and our participants, hoping we’d chosen well. We really wanted this 2nd outing for Flash Fiction Retreats, and indeed, our first outing outside of the U.S., to be a success.
My impressions:
Costa Rica is wild. And although there are resort towns and luxury hotels, Peace Retreat was neither situated in a resort town, nor was it a luxury hotel. And we didn’t want that anyway. We wanted, well, peace. We wanted to retreat somewhere that our group felt like it largely had the place to themselves (except for a handful of yoga students and teachers and some volunteers, we did). We wanted to feel immersed in a peaceful, exotic setting surrounded by nature. We got that. Each day, I woke up just before dawn, to the sound of the birds and the howler monkeys. For the first few days, the wind was powerful. We were surrounded by trees. We spotted iguanas, bright green parrots, horses along the road. A young piglet even came up to greet us on our walk to the beach.
We were lucky enough that there was a full lunar eclipse during our retreat. We stayed up late to watch it, binoculars tilted to the sky, on a beautiful windswept night. Another night, we participated in a solemn and unforgettable cacao ceremony led by a local shaman.
Definitely a slower pace. Incredibly delicious meals. Fruit so bright and juicy and sweet it was like eating candy. Fresh vegetables and salads, fish, goat-milk dairy, rice, beans, eggs, and freshly baked bread. All of the Peace Retreat staff were so wonderful and kind.
We had a pretty swimming pool with deliciously cool water. Bugs? Yes, a few. We were told “this is their home” and indeed it was. Some ants. A scorpion. A few mosquitos (but not nearly as much as we’d expected). This part of Costa Rica (the northwestern coast) is HOT and dry and a bit dusty. Certain of the trees actually defoliate this time of year, so was surprised to see these bare trees, which had their own strange beauty. But there was also a proliferation of swaying palm trees and others, lush with green foliage. Flowers and flowering bushes.
Situated on the equator, the Costa Rican sunset occurs around 5:30 year-round. The sunsets on Playa Negra were breathtaking. Walking back to Peace Retreat at dusk with a fat full moon rising and surrounded by the new writer friends I’d made felt so special, auspicious. I feel so honored to have spent time with this incredible bunch who wrote their hearts out and were so generous and encouraging with each other. I can’t wait to go back.
Nancy’s Thoughts:
What a wild adventure! We saw iguanas, parrots, scorpions, hermit crabs. We heard the eerie, hard-to-describe sounds of the howler monkeys, saw a lunar eclipse, and watched the sunset on the ocean almost every evening. We got to take part in a traditional cacao ceremony, walked along the beach looking for a bonfire (didn’t find it!), and met the locals who set up a spontaneous bazaar at the Peace Retreat. We ate wholesome and fresh food 3 times a day and some us us did yoga in the mornings. I slept like a baby in my screened-in cabina, immersed in the sounds of the jungle.
Oh–and we wrote! A lot. Oh yes, we found perfect, breezy nooks for writing, reading, and in the afternoons my editing class was such a hoot. We had both brand new writers and veterans, but the synergy of the group allowed everyone to get into that perfect workshop balance–a combination of praise, useful suggestions, and inspirational group think brainstorms.
Our final night salon, under the twinkly lights and palm trees with the blessed humidity warming up our winter bodies and the staff of Peace Retreat were our perfect audience.
Eco-friendly Peace Retreat is the perfect blend of authentic Costa Rica with just enough creature comforts to make it relaxing without sacrificing the true experience for the sanitized resort version. Simple, loving, comfortable, perfect. We are so grateful!
A huge THANK YOU to everyone that took that leap of faith with us! Our writer participants were amazing, creative, genuine, and brought their full game to the Costa Rican adventure. We became like family for a week and the Peace Retreat staff became part of that family. A perfect place for some warm, tropical inspiration, meeting new writing friends, mentors, and bonding in a jungle adventure.
We loved it so much we are going it again next year!
Drum roll….
Our Writing in the Blue Zone Retreat in Costa Rica Retreat will happen March 21-27, 2020!
Open Your Art Flash Fiction Retreats 