I am beyond delighted to confirm that I'm going to be one of the in-person tutors for the Cymera Writers' Retreat 2027!
I will be a guest instructor alongside L.R. Lam, at the in-person retreat in March next year. There's also an online retreat in January, taught by Hannah Kaner and Cailean Steed.
It's been an ambition of mine to teach at a workshop like this from basically the first time I found out that such things existed, so my sincere thanks to Cymera Festival for inviting me to do this. If you're unfamiliar with Cymera, it's Scotland's incredible science fiction, fantasy and horror literary festival that runs in late May/early June each year in Edinburgh, but they also run other events throughout the year, including this writing retreat.
What does a retreat involve?
It's a mixture of time and space to write for attendees, combined with workshops, socialising and ask-me-anything sessions with the guest instructors. The Cymera retreat has a range of accommodation options, including catered and self-catered.
This retreat is over a long weekend rather than a full week (or longer), which hopefully makes it more affordable and accessible than many. It's on from Thursday 4th March to Sunday 7th March 2027, inclusive.
Also, there's alpacas!
What will you be teaching?
Not confirmed yet - I need to liaise with L.R. Lam and the Cymera team to ensure we're not overlapping in our topics too much, and to learn more about the attendees and what would be most valuable to them. But if you've been around this website for any length of time, hopefully you can see that there's a whole bunch of craft, creative, publishing and sustainable working practice topics that I can happily talk about for hours and hours.
This is my first time teaching at a residential retreat, but it's not my first time teaching - I have run workshops at conventions (including Glasgow Worldcon and Cymera Festival), as well as guest-lecturing at Napier University on the Creative Writing MA course. I also have more than two decades of experience in facilitation and coaching from my corporate career.
Where is it?
The in-person retreat will be at the Airhouses, an award-winning complex of holiday lodges in the Scottish Borders, at Oxton near Lauder. Did I mention the alpacas?
How do I book?
Head over to the Cymera website to reserve your place!
You seem... super excited about this?
I am! I've been lucky enough to participate in some amazing retreats with friends over the past few years (the first 15,000 words of A RELUCTANT SPY was written while I was on retreat with friends in North Wales) and I've been fascinated with workshops, conferences and creative writing centres like Clarion, Milford and Moniack Mhor and Arvon for years, both in wanting to attend them and dreaming one day of teaching.
There's just something about the little bubble of time and space that a retreat creates that can be absolutely transformative, and I'm passionate about both the concept as a whole and providing access to it for as many writers as possible.
So I'm really excited that I've been invited to do this and especially that it's on behalf of my favourite homegrown genre festival, Cymera.
If you're reading this post and you're a budding writer myself, I hope you'll take a look and consider coming along - it's going to be an amazing long weekend.