2025 THE ABROAD SUMMER EXPERIENCE IN A MEDIEVAL CASTLE

2025 THE ABROAD EXPERIENCE is taking place at LUMLEY CASTLE in Northern England

A summer adventure that will take you to a gorgeous destination while feeding your creative spirt, your palate, and your senses?Think it’s just a dream? Think again. Dozens of writers and readers over the years have traveled to a writer’s paradise with the ABROAD SUMMER EXPERIENCE. This trip will take us to is LUMLEY CASTLE.

Lumley Castle

Drawn by Thomas Hearne, 1779

Having stood for 600 years, this spectacular castle dominates the County Durham countryside. It’s surrounded by beautiful woodlands overlooking the River Wear, next to the town of Chester-le-Street.

Chester-le-Street

Chester-le-Street history dates back to around 100 A.D, when the Romans built Fort Concangis. This lovely market town is filled with shops, weekly outdoor markets and events.

Transportation: Buses and National Rail service runs continuously to Newcastle International Airport and Durham City–a UNESCO World Heritage site.

AUTHORS JOINING US

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ, 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER for POETRY

Craig Santos Perez (born February 6, 1980) is a poet, essayist, former university professor, American publisher (USA) from the Chamorro people, born in Mongmong-Toto-MaiteGuam Island. His poetry has received multiple awards, including the 2023 National Book Award, a 2015 American Book Award and the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry.

Having grown up in a bilingual environment in Guam, Santos Perez moved with his family from Guam to California, United States, in 1995. He has stated in an interview: “When my family migrated to California, and when I left my family to attend college, Chamorro became nearly non-existent in my life. Because poetry became a way for me to stay connected to memories of home, and a space where I could learn and write about my cultural history, the Chamorrolanguage started to reappear in small ways. I do not have a formula for how this happens; it just happens intuitively. Though I have noticed that most of the Chamorro words that enter into my poetry are words from the natural word, or prayers. Still today, my poetry is written predominantly in English, but I hope that someday Chamorro will become a fuller part of my life and my poetry.”

In 2011, together with Brandy Nālani McDougall, he co-founded the publishing house of Ala Press, specializing in the dissemination of literature and culture of the Pacific Islands.

ANDRE DUBUS III, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST for FICTION

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie, a #4 New York Times bestseller and a New York Times “Editors Choice”. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies, and his novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award, a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. His 2013 novella collection, Dirty Love, was listed as a “Notable Book” by The Washington Post and The New York Times, and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice” and a Kirkus “Starred Best Book of 2013”. His 2018 novel, Gone So Long, was named on many “Best Books” lists, including selection for The Boston Globe’s “Twenty Best Books of 2018” and “The Best Books of 2018, Top 100”, Amazon. His most recent novel, Such Kindness, was one of Amazon’s “The Best Books of 2023, Top 100”. His acclaimed collection of personal essays, Ghost Dog: On Killers and Kin, was published in March 2024. He is also the editor of Reaching Inside: 50 Acclaimed Authors on 100 Unforgettable Short Stories, (Godine, 2023.)

Mr. Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, three Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

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JACQUELYN MITCHARD, #1 NY TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the New York Times bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and teenagers, and the recipient of Great Britain’s Talkabout prize, The Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards, and named to the short list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, with more than 3 million copies in print in 34 languages. It was later adapted into a major feature film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her novel Still Summer has also been adapted for a film still in production and her teen trilogy The Midnight Twins, is in development for a limited series by Kaleidoscope Entertainment. Her essay collection, The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship, was drawn from her newspaper column syndicated by Tribune Media. Mitchard’s essays also have been published in magazines worldwide, widely anthologized, and incorporated into school curricula. She served on the Fiction jury for the 2003 National Book Awards and was editor-in-chief of Merit Press, a Young Adult imprint under the aegis of Simon and Schuster.

A Chicago native, Mitchard grew up the daughter of a plumber and a hardware store clerk who met as rodeo riders. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and a DeWitt Clinton Readers Digest Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She has taught in MFA program for Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Miami University of Ohio and Western New England University and was a speechwriter for former U.S. Rep. and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala. An avid Italian cook, she lives on Cape Cod with her husband and their nine children. Her newest novel, A Very Inconvenient Scandal, the story of Frankie Attleboro, an acclaimed young underwater photographer reeling from her mother’s shocking death, whose famous marine biologist father shatters the family by marrying Frankie’s best friend, is out from Mira/HarperCollins.

LISA GENOVA, AWARD WINNING, NY TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR AND NEUROSCIENTIST

Lisa Genova graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University.

Acclaimed as the Oliver Sacks of fiction and the Michael Crichton of brain science, Lisa has captured a special place in contemporary fiction, writing stories that are equally inspired by neurological conditions and our shared human condition. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels STILL ALICE, LEFT NEGLECTED, LOVE ANTHONY, INSIDE THE O’BRIENS, and EVERY NOTE PLAYED.

RUTH PADEL, National Poetry Competition (UK) Winner, FINALIST T.S. ELIOT POETRY PRIZE

Ruth Padel is an award-winning poet, author and novelist with close links to Greece, wildlife, classical music, nature and science — her recent pamphlet of poems, Watershed, explores water and climate denial.

Her twelve poetry collections, shortlisted for all major UK prizes, include Beethoven Variations (“She tells the great composer’s life story more profoundly than most biographies”, New York Times) and We Are All from Somewhere Else, a prose-and-poetry work on animal and human migration. Darwin: A Life in Poems was an innovative biography in poems of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin. Her first novel Where the Serpent Lives was on wildlife conservation in India.

Her non-fiction ranges from tiger conservation to the influence of Greek myth on rock music, and reading contemporary poetry.

Her poems have appeared in New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, New Yorker, Times Literary Supplement, Harvard Review and elsewhere. She has served as Chair of Judges for the T. S. Eliot and Forward Poetry Prizes, and as Judge for the International Man Booker Prize and Wellcome Trust Science Book Prize.

SARAH GRISTWOOD, BRITISH SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, BIOGRAPHER, HISTORIAN AND BROADCASTER

Sarah Gristwood is an English journalist and author. She was born in Kent, grew up in Dover and educated at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

As a journalist she has written for a number of British papers, including The TimesThe Guardian and the Telegraph.[3] She has written historical biographies as well as fiction, and has contributed to television documentaries.

Gristwood’s historical biography, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen is about Lady Arbella Stuart, an English noblewoman who was considered a possible successor to Elizabeth I. In a review in The Times, Kevin Sharpe wrote, “Sarah Gristwood presents a powerful story of the dynastic insecurity of the Tudors and Stuarts, and of the vulnerability of Elizabeth and James to foreign and domestic intrigues.” Sarah Gristwood accepted the invitation of the Royal Stuart Society, on the occasion of the Quatercentenary of the death of Arbella, to give a Lecture with the title: Lady Arbella Stuart – England’s Lost Queen?

Her book, Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe, focuses on five queens: Catherine de MediciAnne BoleynMary I of England, Elizabeth I, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

She has appeared in the movie Venice/Venice (1992), and as herself in the television series Stars of the Silver Screen (2011) and Discovering Fashion: The Designers (2015)

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BILLY O’CALLAGHAN, AWARD WINNING IRISH AUTHOR

Billy O’Callaghan was born in Cork in 1974, and is the author of four short story collections: In Exile (2008, Mercier Press), In Too Deep (2009, Mercier Press), The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind (2013, New Island Books, winner of a 2013 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awardand selected as Cork’s One City, One Book for 2017), and The Boatman(2020, Jonathan Cape and Harper (U.S.A.)), as well as the novels The Dead House (2017, Brandon/O’Brien Press and 2018, Arcade/Skyhorse (USA)), My Coney Island Baby, (2019, Jonathan Cape and Harper (U.S.A.)) and Life Sentences (2021, Jonathan Cape and Godine (U.S.A.)).

His latest novel, The Paper Man, was recently published by Jonathan Cape and Godine in May 2023. Read more about it on the Books page.

Billy is the winner of a Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for the short story, and twice a recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Bursary Award for Literature. Among numerous other honours, his story, The Boatman, was a finalist for the 2016 Costa Short Story Award, and more than a hundred of his stories have appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals and magazines around the world, including: Absinthe: New European Writing, Agni, the Bellevue Literary Review, the Chattahoochee Review, Confrontation, the Fiddlehead, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Kenyon Review, the Kyoto Journal, the London Magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, Salamander, and the Saturday Evening Post.

“Billy O’Callaghan’s work is at once subtle and direct, warm and clear-eyed, and never less than beautifully written. He has a moving ability to express the hopes and fears of ‘ordinary’ people, and he knows intimately the ways of the world. He richly reserves an international reputation. This writer is the real thing.”
~ John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea

WORKSHOPS

Cost per workshops: $650 for 4 days 12 hours 4 days/3 hour sessions (max 10 students)

Full Manuscript workshop $1,200 for 7 days for 7 days/3 hours per session (max 7 students)

ANDRE DUBUS III

Fiction/Memoir

If I teach nothing in my writing classes, I teach this: do not outline your memoir (or novel or novella or short story or essay). Do not think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, even if it is your journey. Instead, try to find your remembered story through an honest excavation of the fragments that have never left you. This is highly subjective material, but it’s where your individual and experiential truths lie. Do this, and I promise the heft and shape (and themes) of your tale will begin to reveal themselves, without any rigid control from the godly, intelligent, well-read, and ambitious author. But how, precisely, does one go about this “excavation”? And how, technically speaking, can we ignite a memoir into writing itself? Come to this in person workshop, and I will seek to demystify those writerly tools and skills that time and time again, if they are sharp enough, and if the writer can summon enough daily faith and nerve, can penetrate the mystery of story itself, your story in this case.

Lastly, this workshop will be both generative, where you will be asked to write new material, as well as a standard manuscript workshop, open to those who would like a group critique of an excerpt of their memoir-in-progress or a completed memoir. However, you are not required to have started writing a memoir to be in this course.

Course requirements

If you have a work in progress, please email an excerpt (maximum of 25 pages double-spaced 12-point font). All work will be shared with every student as well as with the instructor.

LISA GENOVA

Fiction/Nonfiction


Beginning each day: The way in
The Principles of Acting applied to writing
Senses, emotion, & perspective
1000-1500 word

SARAH GRISTWOOD

Journalling and Life Writing/Memoir

In recent years, many of us have come to understand ‘journaling’ as a useful tool in self-awareness, and even self-help. But we are far from the first generation to do so. On the first day of this workshop, we’ll look back over 400 years of, firstly, diary writing and ask how diarists before us have used the process, and what lessons we can take away. We’ll also discuss the different forms of life-writing, from memoir to historical fiction/non-fiction, and the goals of individual participants. 

On subsequent days, we’ll carry out journaling exercises, and discuss how analysis of the results can help us explore and focus our own interests and own narrative style. We’ll address the concept of story – the underlying narrative thread that can both make your writing accessible to a wider readership, and allow you to explore your own authentic self. We’ll discuss the editing process (when to start, and when to stop!); obstacles; and techniques. We’ll hope that each participant leaves with some achievable goals, and a renewed sense of confidence in their own potential.  

JACQUELYN MITCHARD

Full Manuscript Workshop (8 participants)

A workshop for writers with a full or partial manuscript of fiction, non-fiction or memoir in any genre will provide each writer with expert instructor and peer critique, a full workshopping experience, as well as techniques to enhance every element of prose from openings to conclusions, dialogue and pacing, and raising the narrative stakes, with an awareness of current market trends and the publishing process.

BILLY O’CALLAGHAN

Masterclass

The Art and Craft of Writing a Short Story

This workshop is designed to help the writer get inside the workings of a story.

RUTH PADEL

Poetry

Ιn Advance: Write a poem to the exercise below. We will discuss these in the first workshop. If it doesn’t work for you, bring an already-written other poem to the workshop.

Workshops are three hours with a 15 minute comfort break.

Day One

We read and discuss a poem I bring, and workshop your poems. I will set an exercise, for you to try before Day Two workshop, and hand out more exercises, in case you want to try any for the following three days.

Day Two

We read and discuss a poem I bring, then workshop your poems, either one you have freshly done the day before, or an existing poem. We discuss the role of metaphor in a poem.

Day Three

We read and discuss a poem I bring, then workshop your poems (either one you started in the week or a pre-existing poem) and discuss voice, angle of approach, and techniques of editing.

Day Four

We workshop your poems, discuss line-lengths, line-endings and the integrity of the line, and finish up with you each reading, more formally, a poem you have (ideally) written or at least started, or thoroughly remodelled, during the week.

PREPARATORY EXERCISE : ‘THINKING OF SOMEONE YOU LOVE’

1. Think of someone you love, alive or not. Set a timer for ten minutes and list as many small details as you can, as though you are drawing them, e.g. small scar on left hand the shape of a forward slash, their soft dark arm hair, slightly curly.

2. Go for a walk (or think of a path or street you know well and take yourself down that, in your mind) and take notes. • what can you see? • hear? • smell? • what are you thinking? • what is the sky doing? • what is the light like? • are you warm or cold?

3. Write a poem about this person using only images, sensations and noises from your walk. Don’t say directly how you feel about them, or what your relationship is. Instead put it into the ways you describe the landscape, with these feelings.

4. If you feel the poem needs something else, adding a few details about the person from your list (step 1 above).

6. Once you have a draft, think about the form:
• should it be a block • a sliver with only a few words per line • gently paced long-lined stanzas that break after each third or fourth line? Keep changing the form until you feel it really suits the content of the poem.

7 Title it for either one of the details about the person, or one of the images you use to describe them.

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

Eco-Poetry Workshop
(Four Workshops, 3 hours per day)

This series of workshops will explore one of the most important poetic movements of our time: “Eco-Poetry,” which refers broadly to poetry about nature, wilderness, ecology, water, animals, environmental justice, and climate change. 

Poetry engaging with the natural world goes back thousands of years to the present, from indigenous orature to the British Romantics, from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to W.S. Merwin and Lucille Clifton. From Asia to Africa, the Caribbean to Canada, every country has a rich legacy of environmental writing to explore our diverse interactions and entanglements in the web of life. 

In this workshop, we will discuss and analyze the techniques, narratives, forms, and perspectives of well-known eco-poets, such as Camille Dungy, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Jane Hirshfield, and Elizabeth Acevedo, to name a few. We will also discuss some of the major forms within the field (including pastoral and eclogue), as well as how the field intersects with gender (eco-feminism), culture (indigenous eco-poetics), sexuality (queer eco-poetics), ability (disability eco-poetics), and the elements (hydro-poetics). 

Beyond our discussions of form and theory, we will focus the bulk of our time workshopping your own original poetry. Each participant will be required to bring four poems that can be interpreted as eco-poetry. Each day we will close read and offer constructive criticism and revision strategies to each poem. We will strive to cultivate a supportive and critical workshop space. 

During the last part of the workshop, I will provide an eco-poetry prompt to generate new work while on the cruise and experiencing the ecologies of the Mediterranean.  

Daily Schedule:

July 24th Thursday

3:00 pm Hotel Check in

4:00 – 6:15 Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscript

7:00 – 8:00 Welcome and Readings

Dinner Party

July 25th Friday

8- 11 Andre Dubus III. Fiction/memoir.

Ruth Patel Poetry

11:15-2:15 Billy O’Callaghan Short Story

Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscript

July 26th Saturday

8 – 11 Andre Dubus III Fiction/Memoir

Ruth Patel. Poetry

11:15 – 2:15 Billy O’Callaghan Short Story

Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscropt

7:00 – 8:00 Readings

July 27th Sunday

8-11 Andre Dubus III Fiction/Memoir

Ruth Padel Poetry

11:15 – 2:15 Billy O’Callaghan Short Story

Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscript

2:30 Sunday Dinner–optional (cost 35 pounds)

7:00 Readings

July 28th Monday

8-11 Andre Dubus III Fiction/Memoir

Ruth Padel Poetry

11:15 – 2:15 Billy O’Callaghan Short Story

Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscript

7:00 Readings

July 29th Tuesday

8-11 Craig Santos Perez Poetry

Lisa Genova Fiction/nonfiction

11:15 – 2:15 Sarah Gristwood Memoir/Journaling

Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscript

7:00 Readings

July 30th Wednesday

8-11 Craig Santos Perez Poetry

Lisa Genova Fiction/nonfiction

11:15-2:15 Sarah Gristwood Memoir/Journaling

Jacquelyn Mitchard Full Manuscript

Dinner in Durham (Restaurant: Coarse — cost: 45 pounds or 57 pounds with wine)

8:00 Readings

July 31st Thursday

8-11 Craig Santos Perez Poetry

Sarah Gristwood Memoir/Journaling

11:15-5:15 Lisa Genova Fiction/nonfiction

7:00 Readings

8:00 Dinner

August 1st Friday

8-11 Craig Santos Perez Poetry

Sarah Gristwood Memoir/Journaling

11:00 Check-out

Pub to visit: The Boat Club & Tomahawk near Durham Castle

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COST

Includes: Room for One Person, with English Breakfast, 2 Dinners, Nighty Readings. Afternoon workshops will include lunch. Second Person, there’s an added price of $1,000 for 8 nights.

Prices will be announced shortly.

Castle Single Room

Features: 172 sf, one Twin Bed, bathroom w/bath, hairdryer, TV, free Wifi

Courtyard Classic Room

Features: 215 sf, full size bed, Bathroom with walk-in shower & bath, hairdryer, TV, free Wifi

Courtyard Superior Room

Features: 258 sf, one Full Size bed, bathroom w/walk-in shower and bath, hairdryer, TV and free Wifi

Castle Classic Room

Features: 215 sf, Full Size Bed, bathroom w/walk-in shower, hairdryer, TV, free WiFi

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Courtyard State Room

Features: 344 sf, one Full Size Bed, bathroom w/bath, hairdryer, a seating area with desk, TV, free WiFi.

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Castle Superior Room

Features: 258 sf, one Full Size Bed, bathroom, walk-in shower, a bath w/hairdryer, TV, Free WiFi.

Contact:

Nancy Gerbault/Director

Phone: 209 256 2567

Nancy@abroadwritersconference.com