A residential Short Story workshop with Richard Bausch and Lisa Cupolo in Charles Town, WV
April 9th through April 13th, 2025
We will be staying at this beautiful “Almost Heaven” home in the Eastern Panhandle of beautiful West Virginia on the outskirts of Charles Town (not to be confused with Charleston on the other side of the state).
The registration fee covers workshop costs, one individual session with Kathy Fish, workshop materials, private room with bedding and towels, continental breakfast, lunch, dinner, light snacks, parking, and welcome gift.
Writing spaces abound in the nooks and crannies and porches of this amazing home. And when you just need a break, there are firepits, 2 hot tubs, arcade games, an exercise room, a pool table, a ping pong table, and a rescue farm next door (that we are welcome to visit) with cows, ducks, horses, chickens, bunnies and more.
Participants are responsible for their own transportation to and from the retreat venue. (Just fyi, you will not need a car while you are attending the retreat as all events are on-site.)
An acknowledged master of the short story form, Richard Bausch‘s work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Gentleman’s Quarterly, Harper’s, The Missouri Review, The New Yorker, Narrative, New Letters, Playboy, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and they have been widely anthologized, including New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Pushcart Prize Stories; The Granta Book of the American Short Story, The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story, among others.
He is the author of thirteen novels and nine collections of short stories. Three full length motion pictures have been made from his work. He has won two National Magazine Awards (one for The Atlantic and one for The New Yorker), a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund Writer’s Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize for his novel PEACE, and most recently the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence and the prestigious REA Award for Influence on the Form of Short Fiction. He has been with the Writing Program faculty at Chapman since 2012.
Lisa Cupolo is the author of HAVE MERCY ON US, her debut book, which won the W.S. Porter Prize for short story collections. Her work has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Narrative, The Idaho Review, and elsewhere. Lisa has been a paparazzi photographer in London, an aid worker in Kenya, a script doctor in LA, and a literary publicist at HarperCollins in Toronto.
She holds a BA in Philosophy from The University of Western Ontario, a graduate degree in Portrait Photography from The London Institute, and an MFA from the University of Memphis. A native Canadian, she currently resides in Southern California.
Emily Chiles’ fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Masters Review, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Sonora Review, and the anthologies Runaway (Madville Press, 2020) and Instincts & Ideals (Cambridge Scholars, forthcoming 2025). She was a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Other awards/recognitions include: Finalist for Narrative‘s Fall Short Story Contest and First Prize in Sonora Review‘s Short Short Fiction Award, the Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize, a Best New American Voices nomination, and a Petrou Foundation Grant. She holds an MFA in Fiction from University of Maryland. She teaches writing at Northern Virginia Community College and lives in rural Virginia.
Ellen Weeren‘s work has been published by the Saturday Evening Post, the Kenyon Review (KRonline), Fracture Lit, Liars’ League NYC, the Hong Kong Review, Crack the Spine, Stonecoast Review, and others. She’s the recipient of the George Mason 2019 Outstanding Graduate Student Award (MFA Fiction), the Porches Writing Fellowship, the Dan Rudy Fiction Award, the Marjorie Kinnear Sydor Award in Literary Citizenship, and the Kenyon Review’s Novel Writing Workshop Peter Taylor Fellowship. TripBase twice recognized her blog about living in India as one of the top 10 best travel blogs.
Ellen also runs writing workshops and retreat spaces through A Reason to Write.
Format
The workshop will be capped at 12 writers. This will allow all writers to get feedback from and workshop with Richard, Lisa, and Ellen. We will all meet together and four stories will be workshopped each morning. We will have craft lessons/generative sessions each afternoon.
Emily Chiles will be a guest instructor for one afternoon for a guest workshop and everyone will be included in that session as well.
- All attendees will be invited to submit one short story of up to ten pages for workshop.
- These are due NO LATER THAN: March 1, 2025
- You will be invited to the folder after your deposit is received.
All participants will have access to the stories in advance of the workshop and are asked to prepare at least a one-page (single-spaced) constructive written response to the story to be given to the writer at the end of his/her workshop. This should include what you admired about the story/writing and overarching suggestions for revision, including anything that excited or confused you. In offering feedback, please be sure to address the story rather than the writer (for example, I like the way the story explores…).
After the farewell dinner, all writers will be invited to give a reading from something they worked on during the workshop. Each reading will be held to a tight 3-minute maximum. This is a voluntary activity but highly encouraged!
Accommodations
- The retreat is in Charles Town, WV.
- Please note that this is in Charles TOWN, WV (near Virginia, Maryland, and Harpers Ferry, WV) and not Charleston, WV
- (which is not near where we will be at all 😊 ).
- If you wish to arrive early or stay longer, please let me know and I can help you with a list of local options. The retreat space is an AirBnB and the entire space has to be rented out which means they will not accommodate single room extensions.
Transportation
- Transportation is not included. You will be responsible for the costs associated with getting to and from the retreat space. Dulles and BWI are the closest airports and both are just over an hour away from the retreat by car. The Harpers Ferry Train Station is about a 20-minute car ride. If you are driving, there is ample free parking at the location.
- Uber and taxis will pick you up at the airports. Uber is best for the train station.
- There is a transportation company in Charles Town, WV called Elite Excursions that will provide transportation services. A Reason to Write is not affiliated with them (and does not receive any benefit if you use them) but past attendees were happy with their services.
Elite Excursions
- Their phone number is (304) 410-4511
- Elite Excursions
Deposit/ Payment
- In order to reserve your spot, a 50% deposit is required.
- In order to receive the Early Bird Special pricing and hold your spot, we need to receive the deposit no later than Jan. 31, 2025.
- The registration fee covers the workshop sessions, all meals, snacks, workshop materials, and lodging. You will be responsible for your own transportation to and from the retreat (you will not need a car while you are there).
- The balance of the workshop fee is due by March 15, 2025. Cancellations after March 21 will only be refunded if another writer registers for the spot. All cancellations may be subject to a 10% fee.
Apply for the Short Story Residential Work Shop by Filling out the form below
Please be sure to read over the requirements (Requirements) before you apply. By applying, you are indicating that you agree to these terms.
Ellen will be in touch with more details regarding registration, deposit, and payment information. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Ellen at [email protected]