by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
A Writing Retreat in Portland, Oregon: September 2026 Applications Are Open
Powell's Books covers an entire city block. Ursula K. Le Guin lived and worked here for decades, writing novels that reshaped what fiction could do with place and time. The Pacific Northwest literary tradition runs deep: in the rain, in the light that comes off the Willamette at certain hours, in the way the city seems to slow down and ask you to pay closer attention. Portland has always been a city that takes reading seriously. That makes it, almost by definition, a city that takes writing seriously too.
This September, WritingWorkshops.com is bringing our retreat program to Portland. Writing Workshops Portland runs September 16–21, 2026, at Hotel Lucia in the heart of downtown. Three of the most distinctive voices working in American literature today will lead cohorts of ten fiction and nonfiction writers through an intensive week of workshops, craft seminars, and one-on-one conferences. The application deadline is May 1st.
If you have been waiting for the right moment to give your work serious, sustained attention (with a faculty that will meet you at the level of your ambition), Portland in September is that moment.
Applications for Writing Workshops Portland close May 1st. Cohorts are capped at 10 writers each.
Apply for the Portland Retreat →Three Instructors, Three Ways of Seeing the Work
We choose our retreat faculty the same way we choose every instructor at WritingWorkshops.com: we ask whose work has changed how we read, and whose presence in a room changes how writers think about what they're doing. For Portland, we found three answers.
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho leads one of the two fiction cohorts. His debut story collection, Barefoot Dogs, was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, the San Francisco Chronicle, and PRI's The World. A National Magazine Award finalist and Jesse H. Jones Award winner for Best Book of Fiction, he is also a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford and a Dobie Paisano Fellow at UT Austin. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, and Texas Monthly. The stories in Barefoot Dogs do something technically remarkable: they track a single family's disintegration across multiple characters and time periods, each story complete in itself, each one quietly extending the emotional architecture of the whole. Antonio understands how a story accumulates meaning across units, a skill that matters as much to novel writers as to short story writers. Writers who have worked with him describe coming out of his workshops with a different understanding of what their own stories are about.
Minda Honey leads the nonfiction cohort. Her debut memoir, The Heartbreak Years (Little A, 2023), is a portrait of becoming: intimate, formally inventive, and written with the kind of precision that makes personal essay feel like the most demanding form in existence. Her essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper's Bazaar, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Oxford American, and Longreads. Her work appears in the anthologies Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger and A Measure of Belonging: 21 Writers of Color on the New American South. Minda is the kind of teacher who makes you braver on the page, not through encouragement alone, but through the specificity of her attention to what a piece of writing is trying to do and where it holds back.
Sanibel Lazar leads the second fiction cohort. She turned a self-published debut into a USA Today bestseller through creative force and an audience she built entirely on her own terms. Her second novel, Does This Make Me Look Rich?, is forthcoming from Union Square in 2027. Her essays and criticism appear in New York magazine, ELLE, Air Mail, and Literary Hub. She is one of the most original thinkers working at the intersection of money, identity, and desire in American writing today. Sanibel's path through publishing is proof that the conventional route is one option, not the only option. Her understanding of both the craft and business of fiction makes her a rare combination in a workshop setting.
"Hands down the best workshop feedback I've ever received. I felt so lucky to be a part of this workshop and really enjoy the friendships I forged."
- Ben H., Paris Retreat participant
How the Week Is Structured
Writers check in to Hotel Lucia on Wednesday, September 16th. The workshops run Thursday through Sunday. Monday morning, you check out.
Before you arrive, you submit two manuscripts, each up to 5,000 words. The first goes to your cohort. Your peers and your instructor will read it carefully, write letters of critique, and discuss it in the workshop room. The second manuscript stays between you and your instructor, reserved for your private one-on-one conference, a dedicated discussion focused entirely on your work and where it's going.
This structure matters. The group workshop gives you the breadth of a reader community: ten writers at serious levels of engagement with your pages. The one-on-one gives you depth: time with your instructor to ask the questions you wouldn't ask in a group, to hear their direct read of what your writing is doing and where it wants to go. Both are essential. Very few programs give you both in the same week.
Daily craft talks are open to all participants across all three cohorts. Optional afternoon seminars go deeper on specific elements of craft and the writing life. The evenings belong to the group: Portland's coffee culture is extraordinary, and we're spending one morning with the experts at Third Wave Coffee Tours. On Saturday evening, we gather for a tasting at The Portland Wine Bar. The final night closes with a group reading.
This is not a conference where you sit in a large ballroom. There are 30 writers and three instructors, spending a week together in one of the great literary cities in America. The program is small by design.
Not ready to commit to a retreat yet? Our online workshops let you experience WritingWorkshops.com instruction from anywhere, including fiction, nonfiction, and more, all year long.
Browse Online Workshops →The Details: Tuition, Lodging, and What's Included
Tuition is $2,995. That covers five nights in your own private room at Hotel Lucia, four days of intensive workshops in a cohort of no more than ten, critical feedback on both of your manuscript submissions, the daily craft seminars, your one-on-one faculty conference, the Third Wave Coffee Tour, and the wine tasting at The Portland Wine Bar. Meals are not included in the tuition; you'll be on your own for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Hotel Lucia is a downtown Portland landmark known for its extensive photography collection and its location in the middle of everything that makes Portland worth visiting. Bookstores, coffee shops, galleries, and restaurants are steps from the front door. The setting earns its reputation.
If you want to bring a partner or guest, the cost is $895 for the retreat (room shared). Payment plans are available through Affirm for U.S. and Canadian residents.
The admissions process is competitive and the quality of writing is high, but all serious writers are encouraged to apply. Your application will include a brief bio, a purpose statement, and a writing sample of up to 5,000 words. The reading committee is made up of professional writers and editors. Early applications are strongly encouraged.
What Writers Carry Home
Since 2018, WritingWorkshops.com has taken writers to Paris, Dublin, Tuscany, Hawaii, and beyond. The pattern across every retreat has been consistent: writers arrive with work in progress and leave with finished drafts, stronger instincts, and connections with other serious writers that outlast the week itself.
Our alumni publication record reflects what happens when writers get the right instruction and the right community at the same time. Writers who have come through our programs have signed with literary agents, published books, been selected for the TODAY book club, won the Halifax Prize from American Short Fiction, won the Mary McCarthy Prize from Sarabande Books, and earned admission to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Syracuse, Michigan, NYU, and Columbia. Not every writer who comes to Portland will want those specific outcomes. But every writer who comes will leave with more than they arrived with. That has been true every time.
"The workshop gave me invaluable knowledge and insight into the art of writing. I would absolutely take another Writing Workshop trip again as soon as possible."
- Kristin P., Paris Retreat participant
Portland will be no different. The city has the literary atmosphere that the best retreat programs require: a place where taking your work seriously feels like the natural thing to do. Add three instructors of Antonio, Minda, and Sanibel's caliber, a program structure built for depth rather than breadth, and a group of writers who applied because they mean it, and you have a week that can genuinely change the direction of your writing life.
The application deadline is May 1st. The workshop runs September 16–21, 2026. Spots across all three cohorts are limited.
Applications for Writing Workshops Portland close May 1st. Three cohorts. Thirty writers. One week in one of America's great literary cities.
Apply for Writing Workshops Portland →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
