Join us for the ninth annual Writing Retreat at Shake Rag Alley, open to writers of all levels. We’re excited to kick off the weekend with a visit from Kao Kalia Yang reading from her NEA Big Read The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir.
Explore storytelling, fiction, memoir, flash, poetry, and small press publishing with retreat faculty Sheree L. Greer, Raki Kopernik, C. Kubasta, Rebecca Jamieson, and Kristin Mitchell, with immersive workshops, manuscript consultations, and engaging talks. This weekend of writing in community will challenge you to explore new forms, deepen your writing practice, and are led by award-winning published authors and active, experienced teachers of writing.
Choose your writing workshop with a focus on memoir (Greer), fiction (Kopernik), or poetry (Kubasta) and join a community of writers for a three-day intensive with prompts, sharing, and feedback. Interwoven around these main workshops are morning writing time, pop-up workshops and panels with Rebecca Jamieson (flash essay) and Kristin Mitchell (small press publishing), as well as social events, a faculty reading, and open mics. The community of Mineral Point will be sure to inspire with its galleries and local artists. Shake Rag Alley’s campus provides bio-breaks and quiet spaces to write as well.
Manuscript consultations with faculty are available on a first-come, first-served basis and at a very affordable price.
Retreat price $340
includes main workshop selection, Morning Pages, optional workshops and activities, and lunches. Each writing retreat participant will also receive a copy of Yang’s memoir.
Class size limited to 12. Registration deadline is May 5.
A Milwaukee, Wisconsin, native, Sheree L. Greer is a text-based artist and educator living in Tampa, Florida. In 2014, she founded The Kitchen Table Literary Arts Center to showcase and support the work of Black women and women of color writers and is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be and A Return to Arms.…
Read MoreA Milwaukee, Wisconsin, native, Sheree L. Greer is a text-based artist and educator living in Tampa, Florida. In 2014, she founded The Kitchen Table Literary Arts Center to showcase and support the work of Black women and women of color writers and is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be and A Return to Arms. Her work has been published in First Bloom Anthology, LezTalk Anthology, VerySmartBrothas, Autostraddle, The Windy City Times, Bleed Literary Journal, and the Windy City Queer Anthology: Dispatches from the Third Coast. Sheree has received a Union League of Chicago Civic Arts Foundation award, earned her MFA at Columbia College Chicago, and is a VONA/VOICES alum, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice grantee, Yaddo fellow, and Ragdale Artist House Rubin Fellow. Her essay, “Bars,” published in Fourth Genre Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and notably named in Best American Essays 2019, and her latest essay, “None of This Is Bullshit” was published at The Rumpus and featured in “Memoir Mondays.”
Workshops
Intersections: How Research Informs Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
Raki is a first generation American, queer, Jewish writer. She is the author of The Things You Left and The Memory House, both Minnesota Book Award finalists. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been shortlisted and nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for Fiction and the Pen Faulkner Award in Fiction. Her queer travel novel, No One’s Leaving, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2025. She lives in Minneapolis and teaches creative writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Workshops
Christina Kubasta is a poet and fiction writer who also explores collaboration and connection with the visual arts — she also once worked at a small press and book bindery. Her most recent book is the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House, 2020), and her next poetry book is forthcoming in 2025. She posts and writes about writerly things on Twitter and Instagram @CKubastathePoet.
Workshops
Creative Play: Collage, Paper, & Text
Rebecca Jamieson’s writing has appeared in publications such as Entropy, Mid-American Review, The Offing, Hunger Mountain, and Rattle, and includes a chapbook of poetry, The Body of All Things. She is the founder of Contemplate Create, where she teaches creative writing with a mindfulness lens. Rebecca holds an MFA in Writing & Publishing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives on Ho-Chunk land in Madison, Wisconsin.
Workshops
Friday, May 16
10-10:30am Welcome & Faculty Introductions
10:45-11:30am Retreat Faculty—Why We Write & Favorite Prompts
11:45-12:45 Lunch
1-4pm Workshop Groups
4:15-4:45pm Manuscript Consultation Session I | Registration required ($40)
6pm Kao Kalia Yang Reading at the Lind Pavilion | open to the public (free)
Free evening to explore Mineral Point and/or write.
Saturday, May 17
8:15-9:15am Morning Pages
9:15-9:45am Manuscript Consultation Session II | Registration required ($40)
9:30-11:30am Writing Flash Essay with Rebecca Jamieson | open to the public ($15)
11:45am-12:45pm Lunch & Participant Open Mic
1-4pm: Day Two Workshops
7pm Social Time & Faculty Reading + Open Mic (optional) | Republic of Letters | open to the public (free)
Sunday, May 18
8:15-9:15am Morning Pages
9:15-9:45am Manuscript Consultation Session III | Registration required ($40)
9:30-11:30am Let’s Talk Small Press Publishing: FAQs with Kristin Mitchell and Little Creek Press
11:45am-12:45pm Lunch & Participant Open Mic
1-4pm Final Workshops
4:15-4:30 Closing Remarks & Toast
Select the genre you would like to focus on. Register for that workshop.
All workshops meet simultaneously. All retreat participants meet jointly in the Lind Pavilion for craft talks, readings, and lunch.
Add a manuscript evaluation if you would like to meet one-on-one with an instructor to receive feedback on work submitted prior to the retreat. The instructor you meet with does not need to be the one teaching your workshop.
Writing Retreat participants may sign up for a 30-minute one-on-one manuscript consultation with select faculty members. See details about submitting your manuscript ahead of the retreat when you register for your consultation.
Open Mics will be held during lunch Saturday and Sunday on a sign-up basis. There’s also some Open Mic time at the Saturday Faculty Reading at Republic of Letters Books.
Coach House
18 Shake Rag Street
Art Café
Ellery House
restrooms
4 of 33restrooms
5 of 33restrooms
6 of 33Open Air Parking
7 of 33Lind Pavilion Parking
8 of 33Roadside Parking
allowed on Commerce Street
Smejas’ Studio parking
10 of 33Smejas’ Studio
30 Doty Street
Curbside Parking
as indicated
Accessible Parking
with curb cut
Accessible Parking
with curb cut
Alley Stage
15 of 33Cabinet Shop
French Cabin
1830 Log Cabin
Potter’s House
Blacksmith Barn
Federal Spring
21 of 33Monarch Garden
22 of 33Lind Pavilion
411 Commerce Street
two blocks to
High Street & Commerce Street
Restaurants, Shops & Galleries
To Grocery Store
Point Foods
622 Dodge Street
Street Parking with Additional Parking behind Smejas’ Studio
26 of 33The Green
open air park
Stair Steps
between
Cabinet Shop & Lind Pavilion
Stair Steps
to Alley Stage
Stone Bridge
over
Federal Spring
Weaving & Fiber Arts Studio
Cannery Row Arts Incubator
121 Water St.
Footbridge
33 of 33ADA accessible buildings: Lind Pavilion, Coach House (first floor), Smejas’ Studio
18 Shake Rag St.
Mineral Point, WI 53565
(608) 987-3292
