Reconnect with your creativity at the Red Clover Writing Retreat with authors and teachers Amy Shearn and Sarah McColl October 9-12, 2026.
This writing retreat is open to women and gender-expansive writers of all genres and levels. Our focus will be on connecting to that vital force that is creativity and coming away feeling reenergized and whole.
At the Red Clover Writing Retreat, each of us leaves behind our everyday roles and identities (partner, parent, employee, friend, daughter) and shows up as our writing self alone. Over this three-day weekend, our only responsibility is to the writer within and the community of writers that forms around us in the green valley.
Each year, there’s a bit of magic afoot. Time in a beautiful, welcoming space with others who care deeply about words will do that. Chef Dani might also put some kind of fairy dust in the food.
It’s our honor and joy to create a warm, generative space supportive of all writers with the time, space, and conditions to do the work that is most important to you..
Each writer will have the opportunity to participate in two generative workshops, one led by memoirist Sarah McColl and one led by novelist Amy Shearn, as well as a private consultation with Amy or Sarah to discuss their writing.
Guests, please note that this is a hosted retreat, and reservations must be made through the Retreat Leader Host. Red Clover does not manage the bookings for Hosted Retreats, and you must reserve your space directly with the Hosted Retreat Leader. Click the button to book directly through the Retreat Leader Host’s Website or their retreat booking site.
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) and half of the mail art publishing project Paper Choir. For five years, she wrote the bestselling Substack newsletter Lost Art.
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 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 taught creative writing workshops at Sarah Lawrence College, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Catapult, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, WritingWorkshops.com and her own independently run workshops. 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 Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025), 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).
She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, 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.
Want to know more? Listen to our podcast episode with Amy and Sarah about living a creative life, cultivating genuine connections, and their writing retreat.