Writing with Ghosts: The Power of Haunted Writing

With Hiromi Goto and Kyo Maclear

October 1 - 6, 2023

Date and Time Details:
Starts with dinner on Oct. 1
Ends with lunch on Oct. 6
View your program schedule here

Location: Cortes Island

Tuition: $775 CAD

Campus Rates: Campus rates include accommodations, meals, Hollyhock activities, use of hot tubs and campus facilities (does not include tuition). Click here for details.

Scholarships: Program experiences are enriched by having a multitude of voices and experiences that reflect global plurality. Our scholarship program is one of our key strategies to expand program access to underrepresented and marginalized communities.

A limited number of scholarships are available per program with awards ranging from partial to full tuition. We encourage applicants from those whose identities intersect with, but are not limited to: Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, 2SLGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, newcomers, youth, and elders.

Please apply for a scholarship within your program registration form. We ask for a 5% refundable deposit to apply. Contact us directly if you are unable to pay this deposit.

  • Private Cabin Oceanfront – CAD $4,145.00
  • Single w/ensuite Oceanfront – CAD $3,145.00
  • Single w/ensuite – CAD $2,945.00
  • Single w/shared bathroom – CAD $2,520.00
  • Couple w/ensuite Oceanfront – CAD $4,875.00
  • Couple w/ensuite – CAD $4,480.00
  • Couple w/shared bathroom – CAD $4,085.00
  • Twin w/ensuite oceanfront – CAD $2,440.00
  • Twin w/ensuite – CAD $2,240.00
  • Twin w/shared bathroom – CAD $2,040.00
  • Three-share w/shared bathroom – CAD $1,835.00
  • Women Dorm – CAD $1,590.00
  • Men's Dorm – CAD $1,590.00
  • Mixed Dorm – CAD $1,590.00
  • Tent Site Single – CAD $1,565.00
  • Tent Site Couple – CAD $2,880.00
  • Commuter – CAD $1,390.00
    • (All prices include CAD $1,265.00 base amount)

“It seems that the essential impulse in working at all is to rehaunt your own house, or to allow what haunts you to have a voice, to chart what is deeply private and etched on the soul, and find form and structure for it.” —Colm Toibin

What haunts you? What returns and what persists? It may be the memory of a vivid sensation, a deep regret, an ancestral rumor, a former self… It needn’t be unwanted. What ghosts are not done with you?

The idea behind this retreat is to write from what feels vital and lingering—obsessions, images, questions, ideas—from what’s felt in the spine.

We will try to find a form for what haunts us. We will ask how our ghosts might inhabit different genres, perhaps short or long forms. We will find ways of circling them differently. One of the facilitators will bring speculative fiction/genre knowledge to encourage the writers who are inclined that way re: ghosts/hauntings. Memory, metaphor, the uncanny, the liminal—hauntings are a kind of return, writing an act of transformation…

Schedule

View your program schedule here.

Terms & Conditions

You may find our terms & conditions here.

About the Presenters

Hiromi Goto

Hiromi Goto has been a trail-blazing author in Canada for over twenty years. Recognized both at home and abroad, many of her award-winning books have been translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, and German. Her literary fiction traces the lives of Japanese Canadian women— through migration, across generations. Her works that explore the fantastic […]

Learn more about Hiromi Goto

Kyo Maclear

Kyo Maclear is an essayist, novelist, editor and children's author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages, published in over twenty-five countries, optioned for theatre and television, and garnered nominations from the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Governor General's Literary Awards, the TD Canadian Children's Literature Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book […]

Learn more about Kyo Maclear

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