WOMEN, WRITING, WEED & WINE
What would you write if, for one day, nobody needed anything from you?
A private, seven-hour creative retreat for thirteen women ready to return to their writing and themselves.
Joshua Tree • Los Angeles • 12–7 PM • 13 women and NB people only
Investment: $1,000
You have a life you're proud of. A career you've built. People who rely on you. Obligations you're good at meeting. A full calendar and a Calendly.
And somewhere inside all of that is something you've been meaning to write—something deeply you.
For one day, you don't have to be useful.
You don't have to answer to The Community.
You don't have to produce something impressive.
You get to write your truth.
Eat beautiful food. Sit with interesting women. Drink wine if you want it. Work with cannabis if that's part of your practice. Talk about books and art and desire and fear and whatever else wanders into the room.
You get to remember what happens when your imagination receives your full attention.
Maybe you've been saying you want to write a book for years.
Maybe you're already writing one.
Maybe you've published three.
Maybe something happened to you that you haven't figured out how to put into language.
Maybe you're becoming someone new.
Maybe your creative life has quietly been receiving whatever scraps of time remain after everyone and everything else.
Or maybe you simply miss yourself.
Come write from wherever you happen to be.
Welcome to Women, Writing, Weed & Wine.
Writing. Books. Beautiful food. Cannabis. Wine. Pleasure. Conversation.
[COME SIT WITH US - JOSHUA TREE] - OCT 10TH
[COME SIT WITH US - LOS ANGELES] - NOV 8TH
Women, Writing, Weed & Wine is a seven-hour literary retreat created for women who want to go somewhere deeper with their writing—and who don't believe creativity has to feel like punishment to be taken seriously.
You do not have to produce 5,000 words.
You don't have to arrive with a manuscript.
You don't even have to call yourself a writer (yet).
You just need to know that there is something in you asking to be written.
This isn't your typical writing retreat...
It's a room. A beautiful room where women gather around books, ideas, food, cannabis, wine and the strange things we usually don't get enough time to talk about.
A room where pleasure isn't the reward for making art.
Pleasure is part of how we get there.
We'll write. We'll read. We'll eat. We'll talk. We'll get quiet. We'll laugh.
We'll listen to our bodies.
We'll spend some time in altered states, if that's your pleasure.
And for seven hours, we'll see what happens when your creative self gets to become the most important person in the room.
October 10th - Joshua Tree
Our guest writer is Susan Rukeyser, and we're entering through The Worst Kind of Girl and exploring personal reinvention: the selves we've been, the selves we've outgrown, and the woman who wants to emerge next.
Susan Rukeyser writes and lives in Joshua Tree, California. She created the Desert Split Open to amplify literary work that is feminist, queer, and “otherwise” radical, and publishes select titles as World Split Open Press, including Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology and her own new collection, Bad Words. Her new novel, The Worst Kind of Girl, is out now from Red Light Lit Press. She is the author of one previous novel, Not On Fire, Only Dying (Twisted Road Publications). Her short work appears in many wonderful places, online and in print, and is collected most recently in Utility Location (Bottlecap Press) and Whatever Feels Like Home (above/ground press).
November 8th - Los Angeles
Our guest writer is Francesca Lia Block, and The Thorn Necklace becomes our doorway into writing from trauma: how we approach what has happened to us and transform experience into art without demanding that our wounds become performances.
Francesca Lia Block is the bestselling author of more than thirty books, including the award-winning Weetzie Bat series. Her writing has been called "transcendent" by The New York Times, and her books have been included in "best of" lists compiled by Time magazine and NPR.
In this long-anticipated guide to the craft of writing, The Thorn Necklace Block offers an intimate glimpse of an artist at work and a detailed guide to help readers channel their own experiences and creative energy. Sharing visceral insights and powerful exercises, she gently guides us down the write-to-heal path, revealing at each turn the intrinsic value of channeling our experiences onto the page.
Meet our healing artist, Chakra Khan
For our Joshua Tree retreat, the perfectly named Chakra Khan joins us as our Healing Artist, guiding all thirteen participants through a restorative sound bath designed to help us come out of the head, return to the body, and integrate what the day's creative work has stirred.
Thirteen women. The number representing the divine feminine and a year’s moon cycles.
I don't want a seminar or AWP chaos. I don't want you disappearing into a crowd of 200 people wearing name tags. I want to know your name and I want the woman sitting across from you to know it, too.
Women, Writing, Weed & Wine is intentionally limited to 13 guests so that the experience can remain intimate, spacious, and alive.
A seven-hour return to your creative self
12 PM — Arrive
We begin by expanding our identities.
We move beyond founder. Mother. Professor. Doctor. Executive. Caregiver. Attorney. Producer. Teacher. Good daughter. Responsible one. Grown Up Girl Who Has Her Shit Together.
For the next seven hours, you're a writer.
I'll guide us through my Five Stages of Creativity and into our first writing experience: an exploration of where you are creatively, where you've gotten stuck, and what may be asking to emerge next.
Write
We'll write.
A few of us will share.
Partake and Feast
Then we'll breathe.
Drink water. Stretch. Step outside. Eat something delicious. Smoke something beautiful, if that's your thing.
Return to the Page
Then our featured writer takes us somewhere deeper.
Integrate
And before we leave, we'll turn toward the question that matters:
What does your creative life require from you now?
You'll make a commitment to yourself and your work—not an elaborate 37-step productivity plan, but something real enough to carry home.
Depart
We'll exchange information, collect our gifts, maybe hug strangers who somehow aren't strangers anymore, and return to our lives a little differently than we arrived.
Your host
Hannah Eko
I'm an award-winning writer, author of Honey Is the Knife, storyteller, and professional lover of rooms where women can say the interesting thing instead of the expected thing.
I created Women, Writing, Weed & Wine because I wanted the kind of literary gathering I kept wishing existed: intellectually serious without being stuffy, mystical without requiring anybody to pretend she has transcended being human, luxurious without being precious, and centered around the radical proposition that women can pursue depth and pleasure at the same time.
I don't believe you need to suffer more to become an interesting writer.
I'm much more interested in what happens when you have enough safety, beauty, curiosity, time, and permission to tell the truth.
Everything is taken care of.
Your $1,000 retreat experience includes the full 12–7 PM gathering, intimate instruction and conversation with two writers, guided writing experiences, dedicated independent writing time, an optional public reading, and the day's other carefully selected pleasures.
Cannabis participation is optional and reserved for eligible guests 21+.
You'll receive the complete details about location, what to bring, and how to prepare before we gather.
Investment: $1,000
[RESERVE MY CHAIR - October 10th - Joshua Tree]
[RESERVE MY CHAIR - November 8th - Los Angeles]
Secure booking is completed through EventHi.
“Am I writer enough for this?”
Yes.
You don't need an MFA.
You don't need an agent.
You don't need a book deal.
You don't need to show anyone what you write.
And you don't need to arrive knowing exactly what you're working on.
This isn't a reward you earn after becoming a Serious Writer™.
The desire to write is enough reason to spend a day writing.
Want to ask me something first?
You don't have to figure everything out from a webpage.
You're welcome to have a complimentary 15-minute conversation with me before reserving your chair.
Tell me where you are creatively.
Tell me what you've been wanting to make.
Tell me what's been getting in the way.
Or ask me the practical stuff: cannabis, food, accessibility, privacy, what to bring, what the day actually feels like.
I'll answer your questions and tell you candidly whether I think this retreat is the right container for what you need. Come talk to me for 15 minutes.
This is a special place.
Unlike Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan, I'm not looking for every woman.
I'm looking for the woman who has been buying books faster than she can read them.
The woman with the abandoned draft.
The woman with something saved in her Notes app that she keeps returning to.
The woman who has changed and hasn't made art about it yet.
The woman who wants intelligent conversation and delicious food and strange ideas and a little mysticism.
The woman who doesn't want another weekend of talking about writing someday.
If that’s you, welcome.
Come sit with us.
[RESERVE MY CHAIR - October 10th - Joshua Tree]
[RESERVE MY CHAIR - November 8th - Los Angeles]
Here’s to writing the book only you could write and living the life only you can live.
Here’s to creating the world we wish to live in.
Love,
Hannah