September 4-11, 2027 | Tuition $799❋
Memory, the Body, and What Fiction Teaches Us:
An Enlivened Approach to Memoir
❋ AT-A-GLANCE
When: Saturday, September 4 – Saturday, September 11, 2027
Where: Atelier Clos Mirabel — Jurançon, South West France
Tuition: $799 USD (paid directly to Writing in the Dark)
Accommodation + full board: booked separately with Atelier Clos Mirabel (1895€–2995€/week, depending on room and single or shared occupancy). Includes all delicious homemade meals.
Level: All levels — suited to book-length work and standalone essays alike, Crucial for memoirists, but focused on the tools of fiction—so, fiction writers also strongly encouraged to join!
Language: English
Tuition hours: ~25 hours across the week
❋ ABOUT For one week in the French Pyrénées, we'll write memoir from the inside out — borrowing the tools of fiction to bring lived experience fully and breathlessly onto the page.
This is embodied writing joined with the craft principles that excellent fiction has always known: that memory lives in the body, and that scene, image, voice, tension, and structure are how we bring that memory into form. Together we'll shape what actually happened into stories that seethe and sing — scenes that breathe, voices that ring true, work grounded in truth without giving up a single degree of art. The kind of writing that pulls a reader all the way in, and holds the attention of editors, too. Come with a book-length project or a single essay or just a desire to learn and practice!
Come as a beginner or as someone many drafts deep. There's room here for all of it.
❋ THE WEEK
Mornings and late afternoons are given to workshop; midday to independent writing; evenings to long dinners in the Manor House.
A rough shape of the week:
Sat — Arrive from 4pm, settle in, welcome dinner
Sun — Memory, the Body, and Stories That Live and Breathe / Internalizing the External: Image, Subtext, and Silence
Mon — The Power of Place / Speaking & Moving: The Art of Dialogue and Action
Tue — A half-day in the mountains: gentle-to-intermediate hike, lunch in a village restaurant, generative sensory writing en plein air (transport provided)
Wed — Free day to explore Pau and beyond
Thu — Conflict & the Art of Dynamic Scenes / The Necessity of Surprise
Fri — Q&A and revision workshop, drop-in hours with Jeannine, evening reading night
Sat — Breakfast and departure
(Schedule may shift with the weather. Full board, a 75m² studio open to you all week, and the Clos Mirabel hospitality run right through.)
HOW TO JOIN (the two-part booking)
This retreat is booked in two pieces:
Tuition — $799 USD — reserved here with Writing in the Dark.
Accommodation & full board — reserved directly with Atelier Clos Mirabel. Rooms are priced individually, on a first-come, first-served basis, so it's best to book early. All meals are included apart from lunch on the free day.
Accommodation pricing will be increasing in November 2026 for the 2027/2028 season. If you book prior to November, you will benefit from this year’s rates.
See full accommodation options and rates at Atelier Clos Mirabel. Tuition is nonrefundable; accommodation follows Atelier Clos Mirabel's own cancellation terms. as published on their website.
Atelier Clos Mirabel request a 350 euros non-refundable deposit per person to secure the accommodation package. Balance of payment is then due 8 weeks before the course start date.
TRAVEL INFORMATION & COMPANIONS
Partners, family, and friends who aren't writing are warmly welcome to come along and stay. [link: https://atelier.clos-mirabel.com/family-friends/
Additional travel recommendations and information can be found on their travel page here: https://atelier.clos-mirabel.com/where-to-find-us
