Join Abroad Writers’ Conference Masterclass for 9 Days Land of Ancient Temples and Sacred Traditions
May 22 – 30, 2027
Berlima Boutique Resort
Some places don’t just inspire writing — they insist on it. Ubud is one of them. Here, where terraced rice fields catch the morning light like green water, where temple bells drift through jungle air thick with incense, and rivers carve their slow path beneath ancient stone, the line between the world and the page begins to blur. This is not a place you visit so much as a place that rearranges something in you.
It is here, in this small luminous corner of Bali, at Berlima Resort where we will be staying for 8 days. We have closed the gates to the public and reserved the entire resort for ourselves, turning this lush oasis into our personal creative living room. We invite you to gather with us—to write, to dream, and to sit at the feet of some of the most celebrated literary voices working today.
Beyond the workshops and readings, you’ll be immersed in the living art of Bali itself — the hypnotic grace of traditional Balinese dance, the flickering ancient storytelling of shadow puppet theater, and the rich, fragrant flavors of Balinese cuisine. These are not mere interludes to the conference; they are part of its lesson. Bali has always understood that story lives in movement, in shadow, in the shared act of a meal — and for 8 days, it lives in us.
Yellow flowers honor the Hindu god Mahadeva and pray for prosperity
This daily devotion is woven into the very fabric of Ubud—a town whose name literally translates to medicineor healing. For centuries, this misty jungle valley has served as Bali’s spiritual and creative epicenter, attracting artists, thinkers, and seekers from across the globe.
In Ubud, art is not something confined to a museum grid; it is a living, breathing landscape. It is found in the rhythmic strike of a woodcarver’s chisel, the scent of fresh frangipani on a cobblestone path, and the quiet contemplation of a mountain morning. To write here is to step into a timeless lineage of storytelling. It is an invitation to let the medicine of this place slow your heartbeat and open your senses to the blank page.
It is within this deeply inspired landscape that our faculty will guide you.
AUTHORS JOINING US
Robert Olen Butler
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Distinguished Professor at Florida State University, holding the Michael Shaar Chair in Creative Writing
Robert Olen Butler is the author of eighteen novels and six collections of short stories, including A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Vietnam War veteran and fluent Vietnamese speaker, he has spent his career writing across cultures, memory, and the quiet aftershocks of history on ordinary lives. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature.
A writer whose work has long explored the hidden chambers of memory, longing, and the human heart across war and peace, distance and return.
~
Julie Kane
Professor Emerita at Northwestern State University.
Julie Kane is a formalist with a deep love of meter, rhyme, and the long tradition of poetic craft, she has also written extensively on women’s poetry and the recovery of overlooked poetic voices. Her own work moves fluidly between strict form and free verse, often returning to themes of memory, womanhood, and her Louisiana roots. As Professor Emerita at Northwestern State University, she spent decades helping younger poets find precision and music in their own lines — and she brings that same generous, exacting ear to every workshop she leads.
Julie Kane is the author of six books of poetry, including Rhythm & Booze (winner of the National Poetry Series), Jazz Funeral (winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize), Mothers of Ireland (winner of the Poetry by the Sea Book Prize), and her newest collection, Naked Ladies: New and Selected Poems (2025). She also co-authored a Vietnam War memoir and has translated poetry from French and Lithuanian. She is a Fulbright Scholar.
She brings the music of decades spent listening closely to language, helping writers cover the poetry that already lives inside them.
~
Josip Novakovich
Croatian author, Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, Professor at Concordia University, Canada
Born in Croatia and now writing in English, Josip Novakovich has published a dozen books, including the novels April Fool’s Day and Rubble of Rubles, five story collections, and three collections of narrative essays exploring exile, war, and homeland. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Russian, Japanese, Italian, and French.
Josip has built a body of work — novels, story collections, and essays — shaped by displacement, war, and the absurdities of living between two worlds at once. His fiction was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, recognizing a career that moves between sharp, dark humor and the quiet devastations of exile. Novakovich teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal, where he continues to mentor writers navigating questions of identity, homeland, and the strange freedom of writing in a borrowed tongue.
He carries with him the soul of a wanderer — a writer for whom exile became enchantment, and distance became the very material of story.
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Robert Olen Butler
After Craft and Technique: The Process of Writing Fiction
This workshop will focus on the fundamentals of the creative process for fiction writers who aspire to create enduring literature. It will examine what is distinctive about the way the serious writer addresses the world, the inner self, and the objects to be created. But in thus understanding what makes a work of fiction “literary” at its core, we can also embrace not only work generically identifiable as “literary” but as “entertainment,” as well. Thrillers, mysteries, romances, works of speculative fiction–such as fantasy and science fiction–can also all be fully “literary.” The workshop will be for any fiction writer who wants to dig deep.
Julie Kane
Putting Together Your Poetry Book or Chapbook
You have been writing poems for a while now, and you finally feel ready to put together a chapbook (20 – 20 pages) or book (48 – 70 pages). This workshop is for you! Together we will identify your themes, tones, recurring images, the perfect opening poem, the perfect closing poem, weak poems to be revised or removed, new poems to be written to round out gaps, ordering and sequencing strategies, and sectioning strategies. The goal is an emerge from the workshop with a publishable poetry collection. We will also explore poetry book and chapbook publishers and publications contests with an eye toward identifying the best fits for your collection.
Josip Novakovich
We will write and critique narratives in different forms: short stories, novel chapters, personal essays, memoir chapters, travelogues, character profiles, etc. We’ll emphasize the story, whether true or fabricated or a combination of the two as in autofiction. You can bring along some finished manuscripts and we’ll write something new, from writing prompts and ideas. We’ll also read a few exemplary pieces of writing available online. We’ll read the manuscripts presented in the workshop by the participants (up to 25 double-spaced pages) to offer detailed critique and feedback and brainstorming discussions if so desired.
The Art of Movement and Metaphor
In Bali, performance is not entertainment—it is a sacred text written in the tilt of a hand, the flash of an eye, and the rhythmic clash of the gamelan. Following our focused morning workshops, our afternoons and evenings will open up to these living narratives.
We will witness the hypnotic storytelling of traditional dance and shadow theater, studying how epic scale and intimate human emotion are held simultaneously. These cultural encounters are designed to expand your narrative lens, offering new ways to think about tension, character, and drama on your own pages.
Daily Schedule
Workshops are scheduled for the afternoons, so sightseeing can happen during the cooler morning hours. We’ll spend the hot afternoons indoors with air conditioning.
| Day | Date | Morning | Afternoon | Evening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arrival | Sunday, May 22 | Arrive, check in | Berlima Resort Workshop: Josip 3:00–6:00pm | Berlima Resort Welcome party & dinner at Berlima |
| Day 2 | Monday, May 23 | Free / shuttle into Ubud | Berlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:00-5:00pm Robert/Julie | Berlima Resort Readings 5:15 pm dinner: Berlima following reading |
| Day 3 | Tues, May 24 | Free / shuttle into Ubud | Rerlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:oo – 5:00pm Robert/Julie | Reading 6pm Berlima Dinner following readings |
| Day 4 | Wed, May 25 | Free / shuttle into Ubud | Berlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:00-5:00pm Josip | 6:00 Readings 7:00 pm Balinese Dance Dinner, Kaukau Restaurant |
| Day 5 | Thur, May 26 | Free / shuttle into Ubud | Berlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:00-5:00pm Robert/Julie + Josip | Reading 6pm Berlima Dinner following readings |
| Day 6 | Fri, May 27 | Free / shuttle into Ubud | Berlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:00-5:00pm Robert/Julie | Berlima Resort Readings 5:15 pm 6:30 Cantina Rooftop Dinner out in Ubud |
| Day 7 | Sat, May 28 | Free / shuttle into Ubud | Berlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:00-5:00pm Josip | Free Night |
| Day 8 | Sun, May 29 | Breakfast/shuttle into Ubud | Berlima Resort Lunch 1:00pm Workshop: 2:00-5:00pm Josip | Reading 5:15 pm Closing dinner at 7:00 pm TanaDewa Resort |
Monday May 30th, Day 9 Departure
Accommodations at Berlima Boutique Resort
COST
| Tier | Price |
|---|---|
| Single (private room) workshops | $2,500, includes two workshop |
| Shared (2 participants, both in workshops) Travel to Bali with fellow writers — read, talk craft, and explore Ubud together, without the pressure of formal workshops. | $2,000 two participants sharing a room, includes two workshop each. |
| Plus-One Companion (non-participant) Includes meals and cultural excursions; does not include workshops with authors. | $550 |
| Non-workshop /Literary Vacation | one Single — None writing, Includes meals. | $2,100 |
| Plus-One Companion | Plus-one specifically for a None Writing participant. Just along for the trip. Includes meals. | $550 |
Extend your Journey and join us for an special experience: The 12-Day Borneo Wildlife Masterclass
June 1 – 12, 2027
$3,250
For those ready to push their creative boundaries, our journey extends across the Java Sea to the rugged, biodiverse landscapes of Borneo. This intensive, 10-day masterclass is specifically designed to bypass the urban rush, placing you face-to-face with Borneo’s most iconic wildlife,
Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre
2 Nights at Sabah Hotel Sandakan
2 Nights at Tanini Sepilok
4 Days at Tanini Kinabatangan
5 days in Kuching
June 1 – 7
Our standalone Borneo masterclass begins in the historic coastal sanctuary of Sandakan, the old-world 19th-century capital of British North Borneo. To protect our creative focus and maintain elite comfort, we balance deep wilderness immersion with premium amenities. We anchor our first two nights at the Sabah Hotel Sandakan, a premier nature-oasis property nestled on a lush hillside surrounded by protected rainforest gardens. Here, resident monitor lizards, giant squirrels, and exotic birds roam the tree canopies right outside your private balcony.
Two Nighs at Tanini Sepilok in the forest, where orphaned and rescued orangutans are slowly taught to be wild again. It’s not uncommon to see them wander onto the resort walkways and hotel balconies.
Four Days at Tanini Kinabatangan on the river. This is one of the richest ecosystems in Southeast Asia. There we’ll see pygmy elephants, orangutans, proboscis monkeys, maroon langurs, eight different species of hornbills .
June 7 – 12, 2027
On June 7, we take a short internal flight across the island to the historic capital of Sarawak, checking into The Ranee Boutique Suites along the vibrant Kuching riverfront. Rebuilt from 19th-century shophouses, this 24-room boutique gem serves as our elegant urban sanctuary for the final 5 nights. Our daily rhythm shifts from raw wilderness tracking into history & evolution. Josip leads the afternoon workshops in the hotel’s private Reading Lounge, Dr. Jerry Drawhorn steps in to anchor the evening lecture series, grounding the writers’ text in the deep scientific and cultural history of the land.
Writing Workshop and lectures
Author, Josip Novakovich
Anthropologist Professor Gerrell Drawhorn
For more information and to receive an application, contact Nancy Gerbault at nancy@abroadwritersconference.com
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