SPARKS FLY
creative retreats
SPARKS FLY creative retreats are led by inspiring teachers in beautiful locations around the world. Explore sites new and old while learning from skilled and supportive instructors. Regardless of your level of expertise — whether you’re working on your first novel or short story, plugging away on draft three of a screenplay, changing genres, or just contemplating getting creative for the first time — we have a retreat for you. Connect with new people. Delve into your imagination. Create!
OUR UPCOMING
CREATIVE RETREATS
in Langport, Somerset 🇬🇧
This five-day workshop is perfect for both experienced writers and complete beginners. You will find the heart of your story and discover the most powerful way to tell it. A series of timed writing exercises will spark your imagination. All participants will have two one-on-one sessions with Allegra, where you can discuss your current or future writing projects. You’ll leave this workshop feeling energized and inspired.
in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia 🇨🇦
This five-day workshop is perfect for both experienced writers and complete beginners. You will find the heart of your story and discover the most powerful way to tell it. A series of timed writing exercises will spark your imagination. All participants will have two one-on-one sessions with Allegra, where you can discuss your current or future writing projects. You’ll leave this workshop feeling energized and inspired.
in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
Suitable for both advanced writers and beginners, Beautiful Beginnings is a five-day workshop that focuses on narrative, character, setting, authenticity, and editing—and on how to apply them to the all important beginning of your novel or story. You will also discuss the first pages of each participant’s novel or story-in-progress. All participants will have one one-on-one sessions with Kate to discuss their projects.
BEGINNERS SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP
WITH RONALDA JONES
in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia 🇨🇦
Do you have an idea you think would make an excellent film or TV show? Screenwriting 101 will help you hone your story-telling skills and bring that idea to life. In this five-day beginners screenwriting workshop, you’ll learn about character development, plotting, structure and pacing. You’ll also learn how to construct an effective log-line and, very importantly, how to pitch your idea to producers and broadcasters.
OUR 2026
INSTRUCTORS
Allegra Huston
Allegra Huston is the author of Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found; novel A Stolen Summer; and two guides for writers: How to Edit and Be Edited and How to Read for an Audience (with James Navé). She is also a contributor to the anthology One Last Lunch: A Final Meal with Those Who Meant So Much to Us, edited by Erica Heller. She teaches memoir workshops internationally.
Kate Christensen
Kate Christensen is the author of nine novels including The Great Man, which earned her the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She is a graduate of Reed College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she has also taught. Her essays, and stories have appeared in many anthologies and periodicals, including The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Vogue, and Food & Wine.