Next Chapter is a week-long creative writing retreat designed for women forty+ who want to reignite imagination, replenish energy, and reawaken creative confidence. Whether you already have a daily writing practice, are working on a fiction or creative memoir project, or are simply longing to make space for creativity and your voice, this retreat offers an encouraging and nourishing environment in which to explore, play, and write.

Through a series of generative exercises and creative provocations, you’ll work with memory, imagination, and the senses — using smell, touch, movement, and place as catalysts for writing. You’ll write from autobiography and beyond, developing vivid descriptive language that connects body, story, and environment. Together, we’ll explore how nature, atmosphere, and lived experience can shape creative process and deepen your writing practice.

Alongside daily workshops, you’ll receive personalized mentorship and one-to-one feedback from Dr. Helen Paris, author of Lost Property and Invisible Women’s Club. Helen is an internationally recognized artist and writer with over thirty years of experience facilitating creative development. Helen’s approach is attentive, rigorous, and deeply supportive — designed to help you take creative risks, refine your craft, and discover new layers of your voice.

The Next Chapter is about nourishing both the writer and the creative body. The group is intentionally small, fostering a true writing community of women while allowing for individualized attention and tailored feedback.

By the end of the retreat, you will leave with:

• A diverse body of new writing and creative material to build from

• A renewed sense of creative vitality and authorial confidence

• Tools and techniques to strengthen craft — from point of view to dialogue, from sensory writing to structure

• A deeper awareness of your creative process and future goals

• A clearer understanding of your voice — and the courage to use it

All levels of experience are warmly welcome. You will be met exactly where you are in your writing journey.

The ethos of the Next Chapter is simple: this is your time. A time to pause, to listen inward, to write with abandon, to take creative risks in a caring and nurturing space — and to discover what your next chapter truly holds.