Wild Writing in the Boreal

April 11-14, 2025 at Falcon Trails Resort

Wild Writing in the Boreal at Falcon Trails Resort is an annual wilderness writing retreat for women in the Whiteshell Provincial Park. 

Writing sessions will be led by Manitoba renowned authors Donna Besel and Lauren Carter. Both instructors will be offering a variety of writing workshops and a Sunday morning workshop will be offered by guest writer Rowan McCandless. Participants will have the opportunity to select their preferred workshops through the registration process. Please note that each workshop will be capped at 13 participants and will be processed on a first come first served basis.  

The weekend includes:

  • Accommodations Friday through Monday at Falcon Trails Resort

  • Friday dinner, 3 meals on Saturday, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday

  • Writing workshops 

  • Sunday evening reading by Rowan McCandless from her essay collection Persephone's Children: A Life in Fragments, shortlisted for the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction

Pricing

Commuter $510

Triple/Quad $735

Double $805

Single $1200

Cancellation Policies

A $450 deposit is required to hold your spot. 

Cancellations with 60 or more days' notice will be subject to a $35 administration fee.

Cancellations with 30-59 day notice will forfeit the deposit unless we are able to re-book your spot.

Cancellations with 29 or fewer days notice will have the full amount of the registration forfeited unless we are able to re-book your spot.

photo by David Quiring

Meet the facilitators:

Donna Besel loves writing of all kinds, and does workshops and presentations for schools, libraries, universities, conferences, and retreats. She grew up at West Hawk Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park and her “boreal stories” have appeared in various publications and earned national recognition. Her work has won the Prairie Fire Creative Nonfiction prize, the Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and has been longlisted multiple times for the CBC Literary Awards.The forests of Eastern Manitoba, where she has always lived, provide endless ideas and settings. Her first book, a collection of short stories called Lessons from a Nude Man, earned several award nominations. In 2021, the University of Regina Press published her memoir, The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family.

Lauren Carter’s sixth book, a magical realist thriller called The Longest Night, will be published by Freehand Books in Fall 2025. This Has Nothing To Do With You, her last novel, won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction from the Manitoba Books Awards while her short story collection Places Like These was a finalist for the 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Award. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and brings her passion for writing, adventure, and community to multi-day writing retreats organized through her business Wild Ground Writing. Find out more at www.wildgroundwriting.com and www.laurencarter.ca

Rowan McCandless writes from Treaty 1 territory. Her award-winning writing has appeared in various print and online journals, as  well as anthologies. She is a co-winner of the 2022 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for best first book as well as a Governor General’s finalist in nonfiction. In 2020, she received gold with the National Magazine Awards. Long listed for the Journey Prize and winner of the Constance Rooke CNF prize, she is also the Creative Nonfiction editor with The Fiddlehead. Her debut book, Persephone’s Children is a hybrid memoir about Rowan’s odyssey as a Black, biracial woman who escaped the stranglehold of domestic abuse.