They are back! Join authors and teachers Amy Shearn and Sarah McColl for the Red Clover Ranch Writing Retreat.
Participants in last year’s inaugural Red Clover Ranch Writing Retreat described the experience as magical, nourishing, and life-changing. Retreat participants have collaborated creatively, published books, flown cross-country to attend said book launches, started and revised novels, launched their own retreats…and that’s just the stuff we know about. In other words, we’re up to more than writing on this weekend and the aftereffects travel home and into real life.
This 3-night retreat includes locally sourced farm-to-table meals and cabin (or bunkhouse) accommodations at the Red Clover Ranch in the Driftless region of Wisconsin.
Red Clover’s cabins offer simple and thoughtful sleeping spaces and share a communal bathhouse with two full bathrooms, outdoor shower, sauna, and shared porch. To help you unplug and get quiet, there is no wifi in the cabins. Shared writing spaces include the Bathhouse Lounge and three separate spaces in the Barn.
Participants can take part in two generative writing workshops, one led by memoirist Sarah McColl and one led by novelist Amy Shearn, as well as afternoon conversations and activities designed for inspiration and supportive practice. There will be open time to go deep into your own writing, explore the two mile-long trails at the Ranch, sweat it out in the sauna, or just stare off into space. Writers can also choose to have 1:1 consultations with Sarah and/or Amy if they’d like another set of eyes on their work.
This time together, and the place where we will gather, originated in creative spark and supportive relationship. Sarah and Annie have been friends for more than ten years. Amy and Sarah have been admirers of each other’s work for fifteen years. Annie and Dani’s friendship was born in this valley, where they thoughtfully hold feminine space. The Red Clover Ranch Writing Retreat is open to women, non-binary, and gender-non-conforming writers of all levels and genres. The focus will be on connecting to that vital force that is creativity and coming away feeling reenergized and whole.
This retreat might be for you if you:
Crave supportive creative community
Daydream about quiet time to read, write, and think
Enjoy generative workshops and the company of other writers
Can’t get away from kids/work/life for longer retreats
Love super-nourishing local foods prepared and served with artistry and care
Swoon over a starry sky
Dig saunas and Ursa Major bath products
This retreat probably isn’t for you if:
You don’t like smart, frisky little dogs (there’s one named Banjo)
Aren’t comfortable walking distances of 50 yards on gravel
Have really strict conditions under which you can write
Can’t stand the cold (many of the shared writing spaces are outdoors or on screened porches)
Aren’t into sharing a bathroom (even if it does have those Ursa Major products)
A weekend alone in an airbnb is what you really need
The Food
Eating well is a way of life at Red Clover Ranch. You will be welcomed to the ranch with a cocktail (low- and no-ABV options available). At breakfast and lunch, writers have the option to sneak off with their meal to read, write, or have a solo picnic in the wild apple orchard. (We get it. Writers need alone time.) In the evenings, we’ll dine communally on Chef Dani Lind’s seasonally inspired meals, largely sourced from surrounding farms.
The Place
Home to organic farms, artists, musicians, and other makers, the Driftless is a unique and bewitching place. Bypassed by the last glacier that flattened other areas of the upper Midwest, the region offers a dramatic ancient landscape of craggy rock faces, narrow valleys, steep hills, and forested ridges. It’s a place to embrace quiet, take deep breaths, and watch the fog lift. The land is the ancestral home of the Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi nations.
The nearest airports are Madison and La Crosse, Wisconsin. You can also fly in and drive from Minneapolis-St. Paul or Chicago, both about 3.5 hours away.
About Us
Sarah and Amy are both working writers, teachers, and mothers, who know just how restorative it can be when writers get together to reactivate their creative powers.
Sarah McColl is the author of the debut memoir, Joy Enough (Liveright Publishing/Norton, 2019). She also writes Lost Art, a monthly newsletter about the creative work of (mostly) dead women.
Her essays have appeared in Paris Review, McSweeney's, StoryQuarterly, Departures and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, where she was named the 2017 Mary Carswell Fellow, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Wrangell Mountains Center, and a Pushcart Prize nominee for her essay on singer-songwriter Connie Converse.
Before receiving her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, Sarah was the founding editor in chief of Yahoo Food. Her food writing has been featured in print and online for Bon Appétit, House Beautiful, The Guardian, Food52, Modern Farmer, Extra Crispy and others.
Sarah has facilitated creative writing workshops at Sarah Lawrence College, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Catapult, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, her own independently run workshops for writers who are mothers, and for many young writer programs including the University of Virginia, Brooklyn Friends School, and Wordstruck. She lives with her family in Northern California and fell in love with the Midwest as a college student in Minnesota.
Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Dear Edna Sloane (Red Hen Press, 2024), Unseen City (Red Hen Press, 2020), The Mermaid of Brooklyn (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2013), and How Far Is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart/Crown, 2008).
, Gotham Writers’ Workshops, Catapult, Story Studio Chicago, the Yale Writers' Workshop, and the Writing Co-Lab, which she helped found.
Amy's work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Coastal Living. Amy received a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and has been awarded residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Unruly Retreat, and The Cabins. She has also hosted and curated many literary events in New York City, including a reading series called Lit at Lark and an author talk series, Bookish, at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. She is originally from the Chicago area.
Sarah and Amy first met in a windowless Conde Nast editorial office in 2009, when Sarah told Amy she was the cutest pregnant lady, and Amy was totally starstruck because she’d been a faithful reader of Sarah’s lifestyle blog for years. They’ve been meaning to work on something cool together ever since. Last year's writing retreat was pretty much a dream come to life.