May 2024: Sign up for our Jersey Shore Writing Retreat ⛱️
Jump start your writing with us! Revel in your writing practice at our Jersey Shore Writers Retreat June 24-27.
Dear Writers,
Happy Memorial Day. Wherever you are, we hope you are taking time to decompress. As I write this, I am down on Long Beach Island (LBI, aka the Jersey Shore), where I just tucked into a vegan, cookie butter, gluten-free ice cream cone, covered with chocolate sprinkles, which I (kind of) shared with my older son. This came after a lazy afternoon, lying on a towel at the beach, watching the waves ruffle the bay, listening to the birds fly overhead, feeling the breeze and preparing for our June writing retreat.
We’re running our summer writing retreat on LBI, Monday, June 24-Thursday, June 27. We will be workshopping writers’ work in the mornings, then reveling in the sunshine and warm sand and ocean and bay waves in the afternoons. Evenings, we will eat dinner together. Whether you are a new or experienced writer, join us!
LBI is a glorious place to be in June. It is a narrow, flat island with views of the water from almost everywhere, and if there’s no traffic, two hours from Philly and NYC.
The retreat will be both a celebration and study of writing.
We will discuss how to navigate a book project, how to finish a short story or personal essay, and how to get your work published and/or performed. You can read testimonials from retreats we ran in Morocco and New Hampshire here.
I love editing and helping writers get published.
In the past few months, these Sweet Lab writers have published their work: Hilda Chazanovitz, Bringing Passover Back to the Town Where the Nazis Killed Our Relatives (The Forward), Ilene Goldman, Tomato Soup for the Soul (Eat, Darling, Eat), Lisa S. Greene, Where’s My Knife (Eat, Darling, Eat); Jennifer Door-Moon, Nice Stuff (Herstry); Kate Levin, Life Lessons (Marathon Lit); Elissa Caterfino Mandel, Our Passover: Why this night is different from all others (The Forward), Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, Entertaining Fish (Eat, Darling, Eat). Zelly Ruskin’s first novel, Not Yours to Keep, will be published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster, in October. More Sweet Lab writers have work coming out in Eat, Darling, Eat and Kveller. If you want to jumpstart your writing practice, join our retreat June 24-27!
About: Join us for a 3.5-day, 3-night writing retreat, Monday, June 24 through Thursday, June 27. Mornings, we’ll meet for 3-hour workshops, and then have lunch, dinner and ice cream together. Writers can submit up to 40 pages (10,000 words) for line edits, feedback & discussion. Submissions due June 10.
Cost: $1,800, includes three writing workshops, three lunches, three dinners, and welcome cocktail party. Exclusions: Hotel room, alcohol and rental bikes.
You can also pay via Venmo or Zelle.
Booking: We have a block of standard queen rooms at Daddy O’s, priced at $425/night. Please book your room using the code ZINFRO. Daddy O’s is a fun place to stay and offers free “grab n go” breakfast. Of course, you can stay anywhere you like. Other options include Sandcastle, Hotel LBI and Drifting Sands.
The Book Blueprint: June 13, August 1 and October 3; Thursday nights, 6-7 p.m. (Zoom)
We’ve launched a bimonthly, online book club. We will discuss how a book is structured and why it works. The cost is $150($50/session). We will read Nathan Hill’s novel Wellness, Leslie Jamison’s memoir Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story and possibly Essie Chambers’ debut novel, Swift River, out June 4.
Susan Ito, The Liver Nephew (fiction, Bellevue Literary Review)
Joyce Carol Oates, Late Love (fiction); Joyce Carol Oates on Life as a Mystery: Q&A with Deborah Treisman (The New Yorker)