This fall, November 8th-10th, Inkwell will be holding its ninth retreat at Oriental Land in Shanghai, located at the end of Line 17. This is Inkwell’s biggest event each year, and I always love the energy of seeing Inkwell gather together in one place. To see what retreat looks like, you can check out my write up of 2021’s retreat.

Oriental Land Park is a huge space with a lot of different attractions in it from an aircraft carrier to massive bamboo groves to towering wire sculptures. Here, everyone can find something to stir up a little creativity.

We hope to build on last year’s model. There will be six lectures, creative writing games, a creative writing scavenger hunt with prizes, and a reading Sunday afternoon in the park. This weekend of creative writing is not to be missed!

With this many lectures and people, not everyone is expected to join every event, and people can attend whatever interests them.

We are renting a villa from Oriental Land Hotel. Each retreat participant will share a two-bed, one-bath room with views of the zen garden. The Japanese villa houses 25 people and priority will be given to early sign ups. Participants over this number will be given rooms in the adjacent villas.

For those seeking an individual, private room, this is possible for an additional 600 rmb.

Breakfast will be served buffet style while lunch and dinner will be in private dining rooms and served in the traditional, Chinese family style way. We use a lecture hall for major presentations and explore the park for writing opportunities.

Cancelation Policy: Deposits are non-refundable. Additional money given towards the retreat can be refunded at participant’s request at least two weeks before the start of the retreat. If participants want someone else to use their registration deposit, it is up to the participant to locate someone else and exchange money. Please notify the organizers so a suitable nametag can be prepared. If an act of God requires the hotel to close, then we will cancel the retreat and refund all money.

To join retreat, talk to the director of Inkwell, Ryan Thorpe. The total cost of retreat is 1700 rmb and deposit to reserve a spot is roughly half of the total fee, so 800 rmb. The rest of the fee will be due a week before retreat starts. That cost includes shared accommodation, six meals, park tickets, some Inkwell gear (current rumor is that Inkwell shirts might make a comeback), some alcohol, and the programming costs. The only extra costs to consider are getting there and getting back, which can be done by subway and any additional drinks and snacks you want to bring with you.

Ry’s Wechat is Texaswriter if you are interested in joining us.

Below is the rough schedule and a list of conference abstracts that will be at retreat. Please read through them. There are some amazing presentations that will be happening.

I hope to see you there.

Fequently Asked Questions

1. 1. Do I need to be a serious writer to attend?

      No, you only need to be seriously interested in writing, literature and building a little community inside of Inkwell. All levels and nationalities are welcome.

   2. Do I need to be an active member of Inkwell to attend?

      Inkwell is an open, friendly writing community, and I consider all the writers in the world to be active members Inkwell members. As a result, if you have never been to an Inkwell event before, this is a great first opportunity.

   3. What if I don’t want to participate in anything?

      That’s fine. We’re all adults. Go to whatever you want to go to. Spend the entire retreat walking circles around Oriental Land if you want.

   4. What should I bring?

I’ll send a full retreat briefing book to everyone who signs up.

5. What if I’m not sure of my plans?

I always encourage people to sign up early. Retreat sells out every year, and when we’re out of spots, that’s it. That said, I don’t refund deposits, so if you’re really not certain, then wait until you’re rather certain.

Abstracts and Bios in Chronological Order of Presentation

A Dungeons and Dragons Free-Writing Adventure: Mystery of the Scrolls

with Marc Belisle

Marc is from Western Massachusetts in the United States. He teaches literature at an American international school in Qingpu. He designed an undergraduate creative writing course at United International College in Zhuhai. He was a cofounder, writer and editor for the news commentary magazine Reverb Press from 2014 to 2019. He has been writing since he was able to hold a pencil. He takes his inspiration from nature, psychology, society, and his travels.

A powerful wizard’s sacred library of scrolls has EXPLODED, leaving strips and shreds of scrolls littering the area, causing magical mayhem. Can your group of plucky adventurers find enough enchanted inkwells in time to rewrite the scrolls or will you succumb to pure chaos?

Open to all levels of experience and interest in D&D.

Feel free to fill in a level 6 character sheet and bring your own dice or just bring your imagination and sense of humor.

Writing Scavenger Hunt

with Tianna Hennings

Originally from South Dakota, U.S.A., Tiana Hennings is a sketch comic and poet with experience in slam/performance poetry, sketch comedy, podcasting, acting, and international education. She’s competed in over 20 (and probably more) poetry slam competitions, has represented her city at the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam in Portland, OR, and has poetry published inOyeDrum Magazine,The Racket, The Daily Drunk Magazine, and Spokane Coeur d’Alene Living. She enjoys hosting open mics and other events that bring the literary community together. You can find her sketch comedy on Instagram at @villaindreamskits.

Participants will break into small teams, be given a series of artistic, writing, and literary challenges to complete within the time limit. The winners receive coveted prizes.

Rethinking Writing Assumptions Through Culture

with Ryan Thorpe

Dr. Ryan Thorpe is an associate teaching professor and teaches humanities and writing courses at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute. He also serves as the director of its writing program and its writing center. He is the Yu Liming Endowed Professor of Writing and is the executive director of Inkwell. He has written columns for The Global Times, China Daily, and Sixth Tone, and has published in numerous literary journals. His first scholarly book, Teaching Creative Writing to Second Language Speakers was published in December of 2021 by Routledge. Three fantasy novels, The Willows, Arcadian Midnight, and The Warden were published by Aethon Books. He has won grants from the National Science Foundation, the US State Department, and the National Endowment for the Humanities and is currently working on a new textbook series, Writing Through Revision, for Anthem Press. 

So much of our understanding of what a story, essay, or poem is originated from a series of assumptions that we made about what makes a good piece of writing. By looking at ways other cultures write pieces, we can see not only other options for creative writing, but we are able to look back at our own writing and learning practices and start to question certain embedded assumptions that we are making about writing. Some of these serve us well, but others might be the roadblock that we could never name. In this talk, we’ll give name to a few of these building blocks.

Literary Translation as an Art

with Alice Xin Liu

Alice Xin Liu is an award writing writer and translator. She has worked with several publications including the Guardian, Index on Censorship, editor at the Financial Times-affiliated Danwei.org, and as Managing Editor of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing, with Paper Republic.

Alice has translated three books:The Letters of Shen Congwen (Yilin Publishing House), The Problem with Me: And Other Essays on Making Trouble in China by Han Han (Simon and Schuster) and The Road Home by Ai Wei, which is a Penguin Special. Her freelance writings have appeared in n+1, Granta, the Guardian, Asymptote and other places. She was working on a novel and has been writing about her Malaysian Communist granny, who died in January 2023.  On the blog on this site she has been trying to write about herself and her family in a non-fiction form, and has a literary agent working with her on this. 

Why is translation oftennot considered as an art? Often seen as the lesser cousin of creative writing, most working literary translators think of their work as a craft. In this workshop learn how literary translation compares to creative writing, its roots and applications, linguistics and its application, and in particular Chinese to English literary translation. In the latter we will cover the use of idioms, Chinese classical literary references and other forms that are idiosyncratic to translating from Chinese to English.

Combining Poetry and Nonfiction

with Junya Qian

Junya Qian is from the spicy city Chongqing. She works as a communications professional at ByteDance and used to work as a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, AFP and Jiemian. She has published features on news outlets such as Sixth Tone, Mint, and The Times of India. She writes creative nonfiction and poetry, while also experimenting with hybrid forms to explore new possibilities. Apart from being a writer, she is also an amateur dancer and yogi.

Nonfiction and poetry are often viewed as different genres, but their boundaries may not be as clear-cut as we think. This lecture explores how nonfiction has always been an essential part of poetry, how poetry can enrich nonfiction—or even help nonfiction writers overcome writer’s block—and how combining the two can help open new spaces for creative exploration. When we break boundaries and venture into new territories, we may be surprised by what we can do. So let’s forget about the differences between genres and just play!

Automatic Writing for Creative Inspiration

with Gaelle Dechelette

Gaelle Dechelette is passionate about creative writing, as a trainer and as an author, with a deep-rooted love for storytelling. With 10 years of experience, she has developed a unique approach to inspiring writers of all levels to unleash their creativity and craft compelling narratives, from French Oulipo’s principles to improvisation, including more classical storytelling techniques.She has one mission:  making writing fun and accessible. By using a mix of theory and practice, she empowers writers to explore new perspectives and develop their unique voices.

As an author she has written (mostly in French) numerous articles about life in China, and three (soon four) novels from various genres: detective story, thriller, psychological novel.

To know more about her, you can follow her Instagram account: @passage.des.histoires

Unlock the depths of your imagination with automatic writing, a technique that taps into the subconscious mind to generate new ideas and creative content. Learn how to:

* Relax and let go: Create a conducive environment for automatic writing.

* Write without judgment: Allow your thoughts to flow freely onto the page.

* Analyze your writing: Discover hidden themes, symbols, and insights.

* Incorporate automatic writing into your creative process: Tools and exercise to use it as a source of inspiration for fiction, poetry, or other forms of writing.

This workshop will guide you through the process of automatic writing and help you harness its power to fuel your creative journey.

Fiction: Show Don’t Tell Finally Shown

with Felix Campbell

Felix Campbell is an English teacher living in Nanjing, he teaches creative writing, philosophy, and how to be eccentric. In writing he enjoys high fantasy and people’s imaginations lit on fire.

The Dichotomy of ‘Show Don’t Tell’ is a question a lot of people grapple with in prose. ‘When do I assault the senses?’ ‘When do I maintain pace?’ We’ll engage in a delightful yet simple activity that demonstrates the joy of show don’t tell. And then we’ll be putting our heads together to see if we can complete the funeral rites for this endless question. (hint: we won’t!)

Nonfiction: Writing Through the Lens of Trauma: A Raw and Authentic Approach to Creative Non-Fiction

with Darcie Flansburg and Lori Fazzino

Darcie Flansburg loves teaching rhetoric, writing, and the occasional yoga class. She is an English Language and Literature teacher with a fondness for writing poetry and memoirs. A former journalist and thespian she has published many news, arts, and academic articles, as well as poems in a few Lit Mags. She has an MA in English rhetoric, composition, and digital media studies, and hopes to eventually earn an MFA in nonfiction creative writing. You can find her on Wechat or Instagram @MsFlansburg

Lori Fazzino is an aspiring memoirist, trauma poet, and author of the Unjumbled Thoughts newsletter on Substack. She is a recovering academic turned primary school teacher living in China for eight years. Her work can be seen on Huffington Post, Salon, and Ningbo Focus. Lori is a former organizer of Inkwell Ningbo, long-time attendee of Inkwell Retreat, and seeks to help people find healing through raw and authentic storytelling.

In this workshop, we will explore both literary and self-care strategies when approaching creative non-fiction through the lens of trauma. Darcie and Lori will walk you through ways they write from their own position of trauma and offer tips for writers looking to become vulnerable in their writing, find their authentic voices, and stand in the truth of their individual experiences. We don’t writeto heal trauma but can find healing through writing our stories. This is an intimate session of self-reflection and catharsis with time allotted for generative writing through the lens of trauma.

Poetry: The Image

with Marc Belisle

Marc is from Western Massachusetts in the United States. He teaches literature at an American international school in Qingpu. He designed an undergraduate creative writing course at United International College in Zhuhai. He was a cofounder, writer and editor for the news commentary magazine Reverb Press from 2014 to 2019. He has been writing since he was able to hold a pencil. He takes his inspiration from nature, psychology, society, and his travels.

Ezra Pound was one of the first poet/critics to acknowledge free verse as a valid new form of poetry in 1913. In an essay called “A Few Don’ts … ,” he wrote that the creation of an Image is more important than using formal verse and structure in poetics. What can we understand from his theory of the Image in modern poetry and how can we use it in our own writing?

Literature Pub Quiz

with Natcher Pruett

Natcher Pruett is a four-time Shanghai Disneyland annual passholder and student of the Chinese language at Fudan University whose passions include theme parks, the Chinese box office, and writing about a range of topics including theme parks and the Chinese box office. He dabbles in fiction, poetry, and screenwriting; his Inkwell responsibilities include handling administrative tasks for the Scripts workshop, organizing Circle of Sages, and presiding in a hopefully non-dictatorial way over the Creative Nonfiction workshop.

Some people say the point of a writing retreat is to write. Others claim that writing retreats exist so writers can pretend to socialize with other writers. While both these viewpoints have some validity, select minds know that the true reason to go on a writing retreat is the opportunity to prove yourself through the Saturday night literary pub quiz. Questions will be asked. Knowledge will be tested. Only one group will show that their literary knowledge is the best and, in so doing, lay claim to undying Inkwell glory.

Developing Your Creativity with Improve

with Yao

Yao is an arty-schmarty jack of all trades (and definitely a master of none), a friend of the earth (but not a treehugger), a knowledge omnivore (especially about cold facts), a fringe film junkie, a pre-pandemic digital nomad, and now basically a wannabe multilingual poet.

“Unleash your creativity with improv laughs” is designed to spark creativity through improvisational comedy games and collective narratives. Participants engage in spontaneous, quick-thinking exercises that encourage out-of-the-box thinking and help break down writer’s block. The relaxed, laughter-filled environment fosters a sense of community, boosts confidence, and sharpens storytelling skills. It’s a perfect ending note to loosen up, and infuse fresh energy for this writing camp with your fellow creatives.