Courses/Retreats

Novelists, memoirists, short story writers – do you need time, space and encouragement to move your manuscript forward? This retreat is for prose writers who want guidance and motivation to help their work-in-progress achieve its potential.

During this poetry course, we will explore the joy and the perils of writing about the self in poetry. Using a wide and diverse range of poetry, we’ll examine how our life experiences can enrich our poetry and how our inner landscape can be rich and fertile ground for creativity.

‘Summer’s lease has all too short a date.’ So take advantage of a July untutored retreat. Let your writing blossom now summer is here with its seasonal influx of house martins, curlews, lapwings and oyster catchers. Enjoy the space to write, free from domestic distractions and fuelled by outstanding food.

Leave those domestic chores behind and escape to the peace and tranquillity of a Garsdale summer.  Indulge yourself with space and time to write in idyllic surroundings. Meet up with your muse…

Everyone has a book in them'. Do we? Perhaps it's true when we write from our own experience. Whether it's a single episode from your life to craft into an essay, or a whole family history that's itching at your writing hand, this course will help you find the extraordinary in the authentic.

Departing summer hath assumed / An aspect tenderly illumed.....' 'Tenderly illume,' your writing with an autumnal excursion to the unfaded beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. Dedicate time and space to your writing, escape domestic chores and be nurtured by outstanding hospitality.

This fiction writing course is suitable for writers of all levels and will be helpful whether you arrive at Garsdale with a blank page or with a project on which you have already started work.

We’ll consider the craft and mystery of poetry, along with the creative choices we make. This course welcomes both new and experienced poets who are keen to develop their work within a friendly, supportive environment.

Ever wanted to try writing poetry for children? Or maybe you already do and would like to share ideas, take part in exercises to spark new poems and polish up your poems in manuscript workshops. Everyone from beginners to experienced poets welcome on this stimulating course.

Treat yourself to the mists and mellow fruitfulness of Garsdale and give your writing a seasonal massage! Dedicate time and space to your writing, escape domestic chores and be nurtured by outstanding hospitality.