Writers’ Retreat in Provence
Writers' Retreat in Provence
September 19-25, 2010
Welcome
What's New: Quotes from 2009 Writers' Retreat Participants - click here to read
Also, Georgeanne and Joanne will be giving a weekend writing workshop May 1 and 2, 2010 for UC Davis Extension, "Finding your Narrative Voice." For more information, contact Kate Ashe at kasche@ucde.ucdavis.edu
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“I'm so glad I came. I started the family memoir that I have put off for years. I felt if I didn't do this, their stories would be lost forever.”
–2009 Provence Writers' Retreat attendee
This writers’ retreat in Provence is aimed at women who want to launch, restore, explore, or complete creative work in a beautiful, calm, and nurturing environment. We offer an authentic rural Provencal setting and ambiance with few distractions save for those we create ourselves: country and village walks, local cycling, picking fresh vegetables, preparing food with award-winning cook book author and teacher Georgeanne Brennan, and optional excursions.
Your retreat guides and hostesses, Georgeanne Brennan and Joanne Kauffman, are experienced writers and teachers who began their Provencal adventure when they met as students in Aix-en-Provence in 1963. Seven years later, they returned to Provence together and settled in a village perched in the Alpes Maritimes above Nice to look for land and a house to live the life they had imagined. They found both in Fox-Amphoux, a remote rural village which, despite many changes that have occurred in recent years throughout Provence, has maintained its agricultural base and traditional way of life.
Fox-Amphoux is still a place that fulfills the Provencal promise of a feast for the eyes, nose, taste, and heart. Two millennia ago, campfires of Roman soldiers glowed in the valley in front of the house where the retreat is held. Today, the valley is a patchwork of small agricultural fields that are characteristic of Provencal farming: here some hectares of wheat and other cereals, there a few acres of vines for winemaking, an acre or two of sunflowers. This is a place where you can still hear the bleating of sheep as they follow the local shepherd, where lavender scents the warm summer night air, where church bells chime the hour in the distance. It is a wonderful place to write.
Joanne & Georgeanne
Georgeanne has explored this region and her life there through her writing, including her cookbook memoir, The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence (Chronicle Books, San Francisco), which won a James Beard award, and in her recent memoir of her and her young family’s early years in Fox, A Pig in Provence (Harcourt, New York), praised by the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications. Much of the writing for these two books was done in her house in Fox-Amphoux, just across the valley from Le Clavet, the house she and Joanne first bought together in 1970.
Today, Joanne and her husband, Jim Gutensohn, live at Le Clavet. It is here where we will hold writing workshops, prepare food together, and discuss various memory triggers for writing. We will identify ways to nurture creativity, share work in progress, and learn tools for staying focused and moving our work forward.
Our goal is to provide you with the creative space, freedom, and guidance you need to pursue an idea or advance a writing project, and to have fun in the process.
The Program
September 19-25, 2010
This week-long retreat begins on Sunday evening, September 19, and concludes after breakfast on Saturday, September 25, 2010.
Each day will include guided writing exercises, plenty of time for private writing in your room at the adjacent Bed and Breakfast Pierre-de-Lune or in any one of the many outdoor settings on the grounds of Le Clavet, or the adjacent forest. Time will be set aside for individual meetings and for personal feedback. In the evening we will meet for aperitifs and readings of work in progress.
The retreat includes:
- Five full glorious writing days with professional guidance and feedback
- Workshops will include development of a daily writer’s journal and innovative use of open air drawing and optional country walks to heighten the writer’s skills of observation and description
- Afternoon private writing time
- One scheduled private meeting to discuss individual work
- Group readings and discussion on work-in-progress
- Paper, printing, and drawing supplies
- Bed and breakfast at Pierre-de-Lune guesthouse for six nights, five days (arrival Sunday, September 19, 2010, departure Saturday, September 25)
- Evening welcome reception and buffet
- Delicious and healthy buffet lunches prepared at Le Clavet
- Evening aperitifs
- Five evening meals: two in the “cuisine potager” style prepared by Georgeanne (with optional participation of guests who want to cook fresh from the garden), two with our hosts at Pierre-de-Lune, and one at a local Auberge. One evening is open for exploration on your own. We will provide local recommendations
- Village walk
This is an opportunity to give yourself (or someone you love) the chance to get away from daily disturbances and distractions from personal creative pursuits, to create or advance your writing project, perhaps to make new friends, and certainly to be a friend to yourself. Leave the distractions behind and come to Provence for a week to indulge your creativity and senses.
The Site
Workshop participants will be housed at the Pierre-de-Lune guesthouse, which is adjacent to Le Clavet. Martin Pennings and Katja Schnell, a young multi-lingual Dutch couple are the hosts at this charming venue. Le Clavet, the house where we will hold the workshops, is located just behind Pierre de Lune. They were once part of the same family compound. Le Clavet is a small farmer’s house built of field stone and other local materials. Its style has not changed significantly over the last 150 years. It is positioned on the shoulder of a narrow valley and maintains its view of the agricultural fields, public forest, and crest of the Alps of Upper Provence, which it faces to the northeast. There are no roads. The only traffic you are likely to encounter is the occasional farmer on his way to harvesting in the valley. Inside, a reconverted loft provides ample space for our group discussions. A small comfortable library with a good literary collection is also available for use by our guests, as is the Yamaha grand piano for the musically inclined.
Cost
The cost per person for the retreat is $2,500 USD. This amount includes workshop activities and associated materials, accommodations, and all meals with the exception of one dinner. The fee does not include transportation to and from the retreat, insurance, independent excursions or extended stays.
Payment
Deadline for fees
To Reserve: $900.00 deposit due May 1, 2010.
Payment in full is due by September 1, 2010.
Checks should be made payable to Georgeanne Brennan and mailed to:
Georgeanne Brennan
Writers' Retreat in Provence
P.O. Box 502
Winters, CA 95694 USA
We apologize that we are unable to accept credit or debit cards.
Thank you for your understanding.
For more information, contact Georgeanne Brennan at 530-795-3043 or gbrennan@georgeannebrennan.com or Joanne Kauffman at 011-33-4-94-80-70-88 (International) or joanne.kauffman@gmail.com
Travel
Participants are responsible for their own travel to and from Fox-Amphoux.
Airports
- Nice-Cote d’Azur (NCE)
- Marseille Marignan (MRS)
From Nice-Cote d'Azur (NCE)
Train: The bus 99 connects the airport to the Nice TGV train station. The nearest train station to Fox-Amphoux is in Les Arcs/Draguignan. With advance notice and an additional $100 USD deposit, we can arrange transport to and from the train station at Les Arcs.
Taxis can be reserved for transport to and from the airports or train stations. The one-way taxi fare from both Nice and Marseille Marignan airports is about 150 Euros.
Rental Cars: Most major rental car companies have outlets at the two airports as well as at the Aix-en-Provence TGV station.
Driving Directions - click here
From Marseille Marignan (MRS)
Trains: There is a shuttle every 10-30 minutes to the St Charles TGV station. The nearest train station to Fox-Amphoux is in Les Arcs/Draguignan. With advance notice and an additional $100 USD deposit, we can arrange transport to and from the train station at Les Arcs.
Taxis can be reserved for transport to and from the airports or train stations. The one-way taxi fare from both Nice and Marseille Marignan airports is about 150 Euros.
Rental Cars: Most major rental car companies have outlets at the two airports as well as at the St Charles Train Station (Avis, Hertz, Budget, Europcar and National Citer).
Driving Directions - click here
About Your Hostesses
Georgeanne Brennan is an award-winning cookbook author, teacher and gastronomy journalist, much of whose work has been about French and Provencal food, customs, and culture. Since 1971, she has maintained a home in Provence, where she spends as much time as possible. She is the author of more than 30 books on food and gardening, and her work has been translated into more than 10 languages, including German, French, Dutch, and Japanese. Her work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Metropolitan Home Magazine, and Bon Appetit. She is also a popular, long-time feature food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle’s Food Section. A sought after lecturer and presenter, she has appeared at such venues as COPIA, the Center for Food, Wine, and the Arts in Napa, at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, and Chef’s Holidays at the Awahnee in Yosemite, and has had a cooking school in Provence as well as been a guest instructor throughout the United States and France.
In addition to her culinary activities, she has been at guest on literary panels, and has taught creative writing focused on sensory memory for the University of California at Berkeley and at UC Davis in their extension programs as well as conducting private writing classes. Born and raised in Southern California, she earned her MA in History from the University of California at San Diego, and after returning with her young family from Provence and stints teaching in Northern California and Alaska, she founded an imported vegetable seed company and became active in the burgeoning organic market farming which occurred in the early 1980s before becoming a full-time writer.
Today, she conducts weekend culinary adventures at her small farm in Northern California where she lives with her husband Jim Schrupp, continues to write, and is a principal in the consulting firm of Evans & Brennan, LLC, which specializes in food policy and marketing. Among her current writing projects are a mystery set in Provence, a memoir of growing up in Southern California when it was still billed as paradise, and developing a work on the friendship she and Joanne have shared through their relationship to Provence. Georgeanne is member of the San Francisco Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and Co-Leader of Slow Food Yolo, as well as being active in Slow Food USA. For more information about Georgeanne, please visit www.georgeannebrennan.com.
Georgeanne's Photo Gallery:
Joanne Kauffman is a writer and teacher with extensive experience researching the history and ecology of upper Provence. She has a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as Deputy Director of the MIT Lab for Energy and Environment and lecturer in political science. Best known for her skills at motivating and challenging students and peers, Joanne has supervised many theses to successful completion, developed winning arguments to launch new initiatives, and transcribed numerous important science and technology-based stories into a language and form that lay readers can understand and respond to. Since 2003 she and her husband, Jim Gutensohn, have lived at Le Clavet with their Bernese Mountain dog Nessey in pursuit of an ecological life.
The roots of this endeavor lie in her early friendship with Georgeanne and their move to Provence in pursuit of an authentic rural agricultural-based life in 1971. Born and raised in Chicago, Joanne may seem to be supremely out of place in rural Provence. Yet, from the day she stepped foot in Aix-en-Provence nearly 45 years ago, she knew she had found “home”.
Today, an expert on international environment and sustainable development issues, she continues to teach and actively consults with research organizations in the United States, Europe and Asia. She is on the North American Board of India’s Energy Research Institute (TERI), is a consultant to the University of Tokyo’s program on integrated research for sustainability science (IR3S), and is an adviser to the Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS). As series editor of the Springer Publications series on “Science and Technology: Tools for Sustainable Development”, she continues to advise authors on shaping the content and form of their work to deliver their best.
At Fox-Amphoux, she is active in community affairs, gardening, and voluntarily providing English lessons to local residents. She is currently working on a book with US Cambridge-based artist and photographer, Julie S. Graham, that explores the linkages between landscape, memory, and culture. Other writing projects include a daily journal of life in Provence and development of a work on a half century of friendship with Georgeanne Brennan, exploring their shared, yet different memories of time and place in Provence.
Joanne's Photo Gallery:
