Since 2014
Upcoming: May 22-28, 2022 (full)
Host: Jordan Hartt  
Location: Tahiti Village. Las Vegas, Nevada

 

The Retreat

Very short fictions are nearly always experimental, exquisitely calibrated, reminiscent of Frost’s definition of a poem—a structure of words that consumes itself as it unfolds, like ice melting on a stove. ~Joyce Carol Oates

Happening the last full week of each May, the Desert Writers’ Retreat is a blend of generative writing time and private writing-retreat time, with a specific focus on the prose poem/short-short story

[W]here the poem and story meet. Maybe brevity—on sight—alerts a reader’s expectancy […] But the form costs—it sacrifices most of itself. Experience borders perilously on nothing. ~H.E. Francis

Whether you’re writing fiction, poetry, nonfiction, cross-genre, or un-genre work, short work is one of the most technically involved forms in our literature. To that end, we spend a week studying and writing the form.

A really good short-short, whatever else it may be, is a story we can’t help reading fast, and then re-reading, and again, but no matter how many times we read it, we’re not quite through it yet. ~John L’Heureux

You’ll leave the retreat with new written work ready for advanced revision or submission, with new community and memories, and with new inspiration in the writing life.

Though our experience is continuous, our perception of it as having shape and meaning presents itself in slices or bursts. ~Tobias Wolff

 

Daily Schedule

Monday
10 am-noon: writing session
Tuesday
10 am-noon: writing session
Wednesday
Writing day
Thursday
Writing day
Friday
10 am-noon: writing session