WRITE and shine this summer! Explore ways to deepen your prose and enlighten your process at BWBH’s 3-day mindful MasterCraft Writing BEtreat®. Join us to ILLUMINATE YOUR STORY at our serene space on 12 acres in Concord, MA with top-notch writing workshops, literary inspiration, compassionate conversation and nature engagement. Be inspired by BWBH mindful mentors, bestselling authors and master instructors, Marjan Kamali (The Stationery Shop), Maryanne O’Hara (Little Matches), Michelle Hoover (Bottomland) and Jenna Blum (Woodrow on the Bench). BWBH founder Lara Wilson will guide Meditation for Creativity, restorative Nature Walks and personal Mindful Writing consulting sessions.
Please note: this is an in-person day retreat, not a residential program. For lodging recommendations, email info@bewellbehere.org
MASTERCRAFT WRITING TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Friday, July 28:
7:00-9:30pm Fire Up Your Writing! Be Inspired by Fire Pit Practice
Kick off the BEtreat® with fun writing exercises by the fire.
Saturday, July 29:
9:00-9:30am Welcome
9:30-10:00am Mindful Moment with Lara
10-11:30am How the Shadowside Ignites Your Story with Michelle Hoover
11:30am - noon Nature Walk with Lara
12:00-12:45 Catered Lunch from Debra’s Natural Gourmet in West Concord, MA
1:00-3:00 Story Kintsugi: Writing to Heal and Restore with Maryanne O’Hara
3:00-3:30 Mindful Break
3:30-4:15 Meditation for Creativity with Lara
4:30-5:00 Closing Mindful Practice
Sunday, July 30:
9:00-9:30 Welcome
9:30-10:00 Mindful Moment with Lara
10-11:30 Maintain Joy and Stamina in Your Writing Practice with Marjan Kamali
11:30am - noon Nature Walk with Lara
12:00-12:45 Catered Lunch from Debra’s Natural Gourmet in West Concord, MA
1:00-1:30 BLAZE Your Writerly Intentions with Jenna Blum
1:30-5:30 Tarot for Creatives with Jenna / Mindful Writing with Lara
Take time to write, reflect or wander AND sign up for 30-min. 1-with-1 meetings:
Mindful Writing Your Way with Lara Wilson
Tarot for Creatives with Jenna Blum
$777 per person. Limited to 8 participants - Register today! BEtreat details, directions and info about sharing your 3-page excerpt will follow.
Be Well Be Here offers scholarships and subsidized fees to mindfully include ALL
Jenna Blum is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family; the novella “The Lucky One” in the collection Grand Central; and the memoir Woodrow on the Bench, about her senior black Lab and what his last seven months taught her, available now from Harper Collins.
Jenna is one of Oprah’s Top Thirty Women Writers, with her work published in over 20 countries, and cofounder/CEO of literary social media marketing company A Mighty Blaze. Jenna’s New York Times and internationally bestselling first novel, Those Who Save Us, won the Ribalow Prize, awarded by Hadassah Magazine and adjudged by Elie Wiesel; Jenna interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation for five years. Jenna is a sought-after public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally; for her 1st novel, she visited over 800 book clubs in the Boston area alone.
Jenna is based in Boston, where she has been running master fiction and novel workshops for over 20 years. She earned her M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and was the fiction editor for AGNI Literary Magazine. For more information about Jenna and to share her real-time adventures, please follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Maryanne O’Hara’s deeply moving story has been featured in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Boston Globe and Psychology Today. Her memoir Little Matches: A Memoir of Finding Light in the Dark is a People Magazine Book of the Week and led to a New York Times story. Since the release of Little Matches, Maryanne has spoken to hundreds of general readers, medical professionals, and students, and has been hosted by Harvard Medical School’s Author Series as well as other universities, bookstores, libraries, and hospitals. Maryanne is also the author of the novel Cascade, which was the Boston Globe Book Club’s inaugural pick, a Massachusetts Book Award fiction nominee, and a People Magazine Book of the Week. Her story collection was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the Iowa Short Fiction Award. After volunteering as an end-of-life volunteer at care facilities in Boston and Pittsburgh, Maryanne trained as a certified end-of-life doula at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine in 2019.
Maryanne earned her MFA at Emerson College, where she taught creative writing and spent many years as the Associate Fiction Editor for Ploughshares, the award-winning Boston literary journal. In addition to teaching at Clark University, she won grants from the St. Botolph Club and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Marjan Kamali is the award-winning author of The Stationery Shop (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster), a national bestseller, and Together Tea (EccoBooks/HarperCollins), a Massachusetts Book Award finalist. She is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
Kamali’s novels are published in translation in more than 20 languages (19 languages for The Stationery Shop and 8 languages for Together Tea). Her essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Kamali holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University, and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from New York University. Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, Kamali spent her childhood in Turkey, Iran, Germany, Kenya, and the U.S. She currently teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and lives in the Boston area with her family.
Michelle Hoover is a 2014 NEA Fellow in fiction. She has been the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Her debut, The Quickening, was a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award “Must Read,” and her novel Bottomland was the 2017 All Iowa Reads selection. Michelle co-created and now leads GrubStreet’s year-long Novel Incubator program, with many students experiencing publishing success as well as lifelong literary camaraderie due to Michelle’s dedication, encouragement and leadership. A native of Iowa, Michelle divides her time between Cypress and Boston.
Lara Wilson, BWBH’s Founder, is a writer, teacher and 40-year meditator who devotes her life to exploring the intersection of mindful wellbeing, inclusive storytelling and nature immersion. Her fiction has been published in The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, American Fiction, Confrontation, Indiana Review, and the Chicago Tribune Book Section as well as anthologized in Printers Row. She was awarded a 2010 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Fiction as well as scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. For several years, Lara served on the board of the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library and at GrubStreet, where she taught master fiction workshops for over a decade. Since 2019, she has served as the Curator of the Concord Festival of Authors.
