Madeline Island School of the Arts, Asilomar Campus
More writing retreats in October 2025 to help you reach your goals!
The Madeline Island School of the Arts (MISA) has some great writing retreats in October, 2025! That time of year would be a great time for a writing getaway just before the hectic holiday season hits.
MISA - Food as a Doorway to Memory: A Memoir Workshop with Molly Wizenberg, Starts October 27, 2025
In this memoir-writing workshop, we’ll explore how the sensory details of food can help us unlock our most fertile memories. After all, food touches every aspect of life: people, places, the way we live, the meat and bones of who we are. Using food as an entry point to writing, we can return to past versions of ourselves: experiences we thought we’d forgotten, the thing our father said, the way a lover looked at us.
Over the course of our week together, we’ll study the way that great writers like M. F. K. Fisher, Diana Abu-Jaber, Kiese Laymon, Francis Lam, and Gabrielle Hamilton use food as a tool for writing about life. We’ll spend our mornings in discussion, and in the afternoons, we’ll write, applying what we’ve been learning to our own work.
More details at MISA - Food as a Doorway to Memory: A Memoir Workshop with Molly Wizenberg
MISA - The Wonder Writing Retreat Experience with John Roedel, Starts October 27, 2025
A creative reset for writers, artists, storytellers, and anyone craving their spark back. This isn’t a workshop on technical writing. It’s not about launching your Substack or polishing your prose. It’s about something deeper: Remembering why you started writing in the first place.
Sometimes we need to shake off the rust. To stop performing—and start listening again. To reconnect with the part of us that writes because it’s how we stay alive. That’s what The Wonder Writing Retreat Experience is for.
In a world where robots can write for us, this isn’t about writing “better.” It’s about writing something raw and real and deeply human.
We’ll use writing as a conversation—with our imagination, with our memory, and with the quiet voice of our heart that’s so often drowned out by the noise of the world. Through creative exercises, visualizations, and guided prompts, I’ll invite you to sit down with your wild imagination and ask: “What have you been waiting to tell me?”
More details at MISA - The Wonder Writing Retreat with John Roedel
MISA - Flash Draft Your Book In A Week with Allison K Williams, Starts October 27, 2025
Got a great idea for a novel? A memoir you want to write and share? Most of a manuscript…that isn’t quite there? In one week, you’ll plan and structure your novel or memoir, write the five most important scenes, and take home a work plan to finish faster.
This workshop is suitable for memoirists and novelists at all levels—the exercises will be tailored to each individual’s work and needs. Allison works with literary and commercial fiction and nonfiction, and is familiar with the conventions of most genres. She’s helped writers sell to Big Five and literary publishers, hit the NYT Bestseller list, and sign multi-book deals.
More details at MISA - Flash Draft Your Book In A Week with Allison K Williams
If you're looking for retreats with different locations or dates, check out all the writing retreats on the Writing Retreat Directory.