2025/2026 Writing Programs Waiting for Words: An Advent Writing Workshop with Lauren Winner December 2-6, 2025 St. Francis Springs Prayer Center, Stoneville – NC Waiting and generating; patience and urgency—these are all ingredients to the writing life, and, indeed, to the spiritual life. In this five-day workshop, we will enter the season of Advent with prayerful attention and focus, and we will both wait patiently for our words and undertake reading and writing exercises that summon our words. Some of our time will be devoted to being creatively nourished through short readings, and through engagement with visual art, music, and other artistic media; some of our time will be devoted to generative writing exercises. Some of our time, we'll be together in a group; some time, in solitude. Arrive looking for inspiration and nourishment, ready to write and to listen to the Spirit. Writers of all levels welcome. Writing in the Wilderness: reflecting on the immigration stories that have shaped our lives with Isaac Villegas March 2-7, 2026 Redemptorist Renewal Retreat Center, Tuscon – AZ We’re living through an era of displacement, of dislocation. People are on the move in search of safety, of belonging—wandering in unfamiliar lands, in cultural and political wildernesses, looking for communities to call home. This workshop will focus on our experiences of migration and the God who wanders with us. Some of us have left... Reading and Writing with Joan Didion (a workshop led by Alissa Wilkinson) March 16-22, 2026 Washington Duke Inn and Golf Club, Durham – NC Joan Didion often said that the way a writer says things is even more revealing than what they say. What can we learn about the work of writing from her? In this workshop, we’ll devote a week to Didion’s work, particularly concentrating on her essays, discovering the ways she approached specific craft challenges. We’ll practice close reading of Didion’s work. We’ll write. And we’ll workshop our work. (The work we’ll workshop will be work we generate during our time together — participants will not circulate already-written work ahead of time.) Long-standing devotees of Didion and those new to her work are warmly welcome! Out of the depths: writing prayer: a poetry workshop with Marie Howe May 4-8, 2026 Trinity Episcopal Church, Asheville – NC In this workshop, guided by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marie Howe, we will read and write prayer poems. Each day we’ll read poems written by poets from the past as well as contemporary poets. Looking closely at the poems – at tone and diction and image, and line and syntax and rhythm etc. ) – we will broaden the possibilities for our own voices. We will practice radical receptivity. We take time to generate our own prayer poems each day and have the opportunity to share with each other. Writing in the Wilderness: reflecting on the immigration stories that have shaped our lives with Isaac Villegas May 15-19, 2026 Saint Francis Springs Prayer Center, Stoneville – NC We’re living through an era of displacement, of dislocation. People are on the move in search of safety, of belonging—wandering in unfamiliar lands, in cultural and political wildernesses, looking for communities to call home. This workshop will focus on our experiences of migration and the God who wanders with us. Some of us have left... Apart, and Yet a Part, a workshop with Michael N. McGregor June 1-10, 2026 Collegeville Institute, Collegeville – MN Ingredients for a productive writing experience: a room with a view, meals provided, the opportunity to structure your writing time as you wish, and access to an award-winning writing coach. This program is designed to give participants maximum time and freedom for writing. Mornings and afternoons are yours to structure as you wish. Writing in an Age of Anxiety, a workshop with Sara Billups June 15-June 20, 2026 Collegeville Institute, Collegeville – MN With a focus on essays, memoir, and other narrative forms, this program is designed to energize writers and welcome creative thinking in this cultural moment. Short readings, generative prompts and workshops will be matched with spacious time for work and rest. Alongside peers, you will consider if anxiety can be a companion—not to work despite, but rather in the midst of—to surface more human, honest, and meaningful work. Publishing for the Public with Katelyn Beaty June 25-June 30, 2026 Collegeville Institute, Collegeville – MN In this workshop, Brazos Press editorial director and author Katelyn Beaty will speak to the public dimensions of writing in the Internet era, looking at how writers can effectively share their work online as well as how online spaces shape, for good and for ill, the craft of writing. In particular, this workshop will look... Writing with the Mystics: A Generative Fiction Workshop with Garth Greenwell July 13-July 19, 2026 Collegeville Institute, Collegeville – MN In this generative workshop led by PEN/Faulkner award winner Garth Greenwell, we will explore the writings of three profound thinkers of the Christian mystical tradition—Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhardt—to suggest meaningful new territories in our creative work. At the heart of mystical or apophatic thinking is the same intuition that fuels much creative writing: a sense of the profound inadequacy of language to represent certain kinds of experience. This intuition can lead to remarkable linguistic innovation, an attempt to somehow supercharge language with meaningfulness, to make it a more expansive, more capacious medium. Poetry, Scripture, & Imagination: A Workshop for Preachers with Jessica Jacobs July 27-Aug 3, 2026 Collegeville Institute, Collegeville – MN In this workshop, poet and essayist Jessica Jacobs will draw on her experience researching and writing unalone, a collection of poems in conversation with Genesis—and on Ignatian contemplation; the midrashic practice of close reading; and the use of literary techniques like the expansive use of figurative language—to offer some new possible pathways into exploring the text and then compelling your listeners to join you on that journey. Grounded by Place/Growing through Time with Camille T. Dungy August 5-11, 2026 Collegeville Institute, Collegeville – MN In this generative workshop, we will work on bringing life and depth to our writing by conveying compelling connections to the patterns and textures of the living world. Thinking in communion with some of the sample texts we will read during our time together, we will spend our time building work that engages with ecological thought and practices.
