Reconnect with your creativity at the Red Clover Writing Retreat with authors and teachers Amy Shearn and Sarah McColl October 9-12, 2026.

This writing retreat is open to women and gender-expansive writers of all genres and levels. Our focus will be on connecting to that vital force that is creativity and coming away feeling reenergized and whole. 

Due to the small size of this retreat, we cannot offer refunds. Please be certain before booking.

What you get:

• 3-nights shared or private cabin accommodations

• communal bathhouse with two full bathrooms, outdoor shower, sauna, and shared porch

• meals by Chef Dani Lind featuring locally sourced food from surrounding farms

• two generative workshops, one led by memoirist Sarah McColl and one led by novelist Amy Shearn

• 1:1 meeting with Amy or Sarah to discuss your writing

• Time to go deep with your writing and connect with other writers

This retreat might be for you if you:

• Crave supportive creative community

• Daydream about quiet time to read, write, and think

• Enjoy generative workshops and the company of other writers

• Can’t get away from kids/work/life for longer retreats

• Love super-nourishing local foods prepared and served with artistry and care

• Swoon over a starry sky

• Enjoy quiet, off-the-beaten path hidden gems

• Dig saunas and Ursa Major bath products

This retreat probably isn’t for you if:

• Aren’t comfortable walking distances of 50 yards on gravel

• Aren’t into sharing a bathroom (even if it does have those Ursa Major products)

• Can't deal with rustic (but stylish) off-the-beaten path accommodations

• You don’t like smart, frisky little dogs (there’s one named Banjo)

• Have really strict conditions under which you can write

• Can’t stand the cold (It's Wisconsin. You never know!)

• A weekend alone in an airbnb is what you really need

• Need wifi at bedtime. There is no wifi in the cabins.

Sarah and Amy are both working writers, teachers, and mothers, who know just how restorative it can be when writers get together to reactivate their creative powers. 

Sarah McColl is the author of the debut memoir, Joy Enough (Liveright Publishing/Norton, 2019) and half of the mail art publishing project Paper Choir. For five years, she wrote the bestselling Substack newsletter Lost Art.

Her essays have appeared in Paris Review, McSweeney's, StoryQuarterly, Departures and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, where she was named the 2017 Mary Carswell Fellow, the Millay Arts, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Wrangell Mountains Center, and a Pushcart Prize nominee for her essay on singer-songwriter Connie Converse.

Before receiving her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, Sarah was the founding editor in chief of Yahoo Food. Her food writing has been featured in print and online for Bon Appétit, House Beautiful, The Guardian, Food52, Modern Farmer, Extra Crispy and others. 

Sarah has taught creative writing workshops at Sarah Lawrence College, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Catapult, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, WritingWorkshops.com and her own independently run workshops. She lives with her family in Northern California and fell in love with the Midwest as a college student in Minnesota.

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025), Dear Edna Sloane (Red Hen Press, 2024),  Unseen City (Red Hen Press, 2020), The Mermaid of Brooklyn (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2013), and How Far Is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart/Crown, 2008). 

She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Gotham Writers’ Workshops, Catapult, Story Studio Chicago, the Yale Writers' Workshop, and the Writing Co-Lab, which she helped found.

Amy's work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Coastal Living. Amy received a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and has been awarded residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Unruly Retreat, and The Cabins. She has also hosted and curated many literary events in New York City, including a reading series called Lit at Lark and an author talk series, Bookish, at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. She is originally from the Chicago area.

Sarah and Amy first met in a windowless Conde Nast editorial office in 2009, when Sarah told Amy she was the cutest pregnant lady, and Amy was totally starstruck because she’d been a faithful reader of Sarah’s lifestyle blog for years. They’ve been meaning to work on something cool together ever since.

Communal mealtimes are a time for celebration at Red Clover Ranch.

You will be welcomed to the ranch with a cocktail (low- and no-ABV options available). Tea, coffee, and infused waters are available throughout the day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are hearty, healthy meals full of fresh and vibrant flavors (think: wood fired pizza, spiced lentil soups, salads too pretty to eat.) Our goodbye brunch will keep you fueled for your travels.

Chef Dani will joyfully accommodate your dietary restrictions.

The Ranch also serves wine, beer, and other non-alcoholic options, such as kombucha, La Croix, and n/a beer, at additional cost.

Home to organic farms, artists, musicians, and other makers, the Driftless is a bewitching place. Bypassed by the last glacier that flattened other areas of the upper Midwest, the region offers a dramatic ancient landscape of craggy rock faces, narrow valleys, steep hills, and forested ridges. It’s a place to embrace quiet, take deep breaths, and watch the fog lift. The  land is the ancestral home of the Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi nations.

The nearest airports are Madison and La Crosse, Wisconsin. You can also fly in and drive from Minneapolis-St. Paul or Chicago, both about 3.5 hours away.