2025 Women’s Creative Writing Workshop Retreat: Inspirations for a New Year
January 2-8, 2025, seven days, six nights in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the start of 2025, a new year, and we are inspired to revisit the years passed and the one that now begins. What are our hopes, dreams, wishes, aspirations. What are our regrets. What memories come up that bring us gratitude, […]
Lower Price, Return to Teotitlan del Valle: 2018 Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing Retreat with Gentle Yoga
2018 Writing Workshop is Cancelled We are moving the retreat back to the quiet of Teotitlan del Valle from Oaxaca City and lowering the price to make it more affordable for you to attend! This is our 8th year for the Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing Retreat. We welcome neophyte women writers and those of us […]
Taking a Break
I made the transition from Oaxaca to California to join my family in care giving for our mother. My sister and I are taking alternating 24-hour periods. Our mom will be 100 on her next birthday, Valentine’s Day. After writing this blog almost non-stop since November 2007, I’ve decided it’s time to take a break […]
Blogger’s Dilemma: What To Say and How Often
Perhaps I’ve been traveling too long and have run out of things to say about Oaxaca, and what would be interesting to know, see and do there. I left Mexico on August 19, 2014, not scheduled to return until early October, another two weeks from now. I am not there, so daily life is not […]
Guest Blog: Tlacolula Market Chickens by Janet Andrews
Tlacolula Market Chickens by Janet Andrews* Large orange feet and toe nails sticking straight up in the air – rows of them – pull me away from the other sights, sounds, and smells of the Tlacolula Market. The four toes of each foot are spread wide just like Beth instructed us to do with our […]
Literary Journal Publishes Women’s Writing Retreat Essay
Minerva Rising Literary Journal co-editor and poet Dulcie Witman invited me to write a guest essay for their blog. My essay, Women Who Have Something to Say, reflects the women’s creative writing and yoga workshop/retreat experience. Minerva Rising Literary Journal celebrates the creativity and wisdom in every woman. Their blog invites guest writers to contribute essays, […]
Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat 2014: Lifting Your Creative Voice
4th Annual Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat. Arrive Friday, February 28, leave Saturday, March 8, 2014–8 nights, 9 days. We are women who have something to say. We keep journals, notes, drafts of unpublished material. Or, we dream of writing and never have. Ideas percolate and we want to develop them. Perhaps we have […]
Sunday Tlacolula Market for Women’s Creative Writing Group
We include a trip to the Sunday Tlacolula market outside the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, as an integral part of the creative writing experience at our annual women’s writing and yoga retreat held in early spring each year. Why? Because the market stimulates the senses and gives participants triggers from which to jump off into […]
Third Annual Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing + Yoga Retreat: Lifting Your Creative Voice
Arrive Friday, March 8, leave Saturday, March 16, 2013–8 nights, 9 days. Our Third Annual Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat: Lifting Your Creative Voice is a workshop based in the Zapotec weaving village of Teotitlan del Valle. Imagine a setting so beautiful that it inspires all the best within you to write and […]
Oaxaca Essay Conveys Women’s Writing Retreat Experience
Sue Spirit, a participant in our Women’s Creative Writing and Yoga Retreat 2011, had this essay about her experience published in “All About Women,” a High Country of North Carolina magazine. It beautifully expresses our week together and I want to share it with you. Published here with Sue’s permission! Oaxaca: Bright Riches on My […]
Novelist, Poet and English Professor Robin Greene Leads Creative Writing Workshop
Robin Greene, novelist, poet, English professor, yoga practitioner, parent and wife, is a native New Yorker who is a “Southerner by choice.” She came to Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1989, and joined the faculty at Methodist University where she is now Professor of English and Writing, the Director of the Writing Center, and Literary Editor […]
New Oaxaca Workshops in the Works
Behind the scenes, we’re busy! I’ve talked with writers, artists, and designers about new workshops to offer in Oaxaca in 2012. I’m happy to say we are in the final planning stages for the following programs: Making handmade books and journals with Lisa Gilbert. We’ll go to the paper studio in San Agustin Etla to see […]
Food and Poetry: Writing About Eating, Ingredients and the Kitchen
After our cooking class with Reyna Mendoza Ruiz, Robin Greene, MFA, led us in a writing about food discussion. She referred us to Poet Laureate Mark Strand’s poem, “Pot Roast.” He uses words masterfully: gaze, sit, spoon, “I bend, I raise my fork in praise.” We come to a place where we are ‘eating poetry.’ […]
Creative Writing Workshop in Oaxaca: Soft and Hard Sounds of Language
“Writers pay attention to the emotional quality of the sounds,” says our workshop leader Robin Greene, MFA. Think of the word “mother,” she continues and the comforting “mmmmm” sound. The quality of the sounds are the tools to create an emotion. The hard sounds of “t” and “k” convey the harshness of an emotion as […]
A Gift: Lifting Your Creative Voice Chapbook from the Oaxaca Women’s Writing Retreat
Today I received an extraordinary gift. Morgen, one of the participants from our women’s writing and yoga retreat, has collected the product of what we wrote and spoke during our week together in March and created a chapbook. I received this just moments ago as did the other women who were with us. It came […]