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 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
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 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 see 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.
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.
See full accommodation options and rates at Atelier Clos Mirabel. Tuition is nonrefundable except in genuine emergencies; accommodation follows Atelier Clos Mirabel's own cancellation terms.
BRINGING SOMEONE
Partners, family, and friends who aren't writing are warmly welcome to come along and stay. [link: https://atelier.clos-mirabel.com/family-friends/
