Iceland Writers Retreat
Escape, Learn, Explore, Create
Join us at the Iceland Writers Retreat from April 23-27, 2025, in Reykjavík, Iceland
What's Included in the Retreat
- Small-group writing workshops for all levels, led by well-known writers from around the world
- Unique panels featuring Icelandic authors
- All-inclusive, unique tours to experience Iceland’s inspiring nature
- Literary walking tour of Reykjavík, a UNESCO City Literature
- Additional readings and panels by our faculty
- Receptions, music, readings, meals, and more!
2025 Featured Authors
Curtis Sittenfeld
Bestselling author
of seven novels
Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels, including Romantic Comedy, Prep, American Wife, Eligible and Rodham, and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her books have been selected by The New York Times, Time, EW, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, picked twice for Reese Witherspoon's book club, optioned for television and film, and translated into thirty languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories anthology, of which she was the 2020 guest editor. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Photo by Jenn Ackerman)
Workshops
Plotting Your Novel From Start to Finish
Fiction Troubleshooting
Jonas Hassen Khemiri
August Prize winner
Jonas Hassen Khemiri has written six novels, seven plays, and a collection of plays and short stories. His texts have been translated into more than 35 languages, and his plays are performed worldwide.
His novel One Eye Red (Ett öga rött) received the Borås Tidning Award for Best Literary Debut Novel and became the bestselling paperback in Sweden of any category in 2004. Khemiri’s second novel, Montecore: The Silence of the Tiger, was awarded the prestigious P.O. Enquist Literary Prize, won Swedish Radio’s Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the August Award. Upon its U.S. publication by Knopf, The New York Times Book Review dubbed the novel “wondrous.” In 2012, following a terrorist bombing in central Stockholm, Khemiri published the powerful short novel I Call My Brothers (Jag ringer mina bröder) to great critical acclaim.
Everything I Don't Remember won the August Prize, Sweden’s highest literary honor. The Father Clause was longlisted for the Pen America Literary Awards and chosen as a finalist for the National Book Award.
In 2013, Khemiri’s open letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice in response to the controversial police project REVA rapidly became one of the most shared articles on social media in Swedish history. The article was translated and published in newspapers around the world, including The New York Times.
Khemiri’s bestselling 2023 novel, The Sisters, was a finalist for the August Prize.
In 2021, Khemiri moved with his family to New York City as a Cullman Fellow. He teaches creative writing at NYU.
(Photo by Max Burkhalter/Albert Bonniers Förlag)
Workshops
Rebellious Voices
Blueprints for Fiction: Structuring Your Novel with Purpose
Helen Macdonald
Samuel Johnson Prize winner, naturalist
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, and naturalist. Before being a writer, they worked in raptor research and conservation, then as a historian of science, specializing in the history of natural history, ornithology, and animal behavior. They are best known for the internationally bestselling and prize-winning memoir H Is for Hawk and the essay collection Vesper Flights. They've also written a cultural history of falcons Falcon, and three collections of poetry. Their most recent book is the sci-fi thriller Prophet written in collaboration with Sin Blaché. They are an Affiliated Research Scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Helen lives in Suffolk, England, with three rambunctious parrots.
(Photo by Tom Lucas)
Workshops
Memoir
Encountering the Non-Human
Jann Arden
Bestselling author,
multi-platinum singer
Jann Arden is a multi-platinum, award-winning singer, songwriter, actor and author. Arden has released 15 albums with 19 top ten singles. Her most recent album, Descendant, was released in January 2022.
Arden has written six books, the most recent being her debut novel The Bittlemores released November 7th, 2023. Her most recent memoir If I Knew Then: Finding Wisdom in Failure and Power in Aging follows Arden’s 2017 Canadian best-seller, Feeding my Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as My Mom Lives with Memory Loss, which spent a combined 44 weeks on the Globe and Mail bestseller lists.
Arden’s accolades include 8 JUNO Awards including Female Artist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year, 10 SOCAN Awards and 4 Western Canadian Music Awards to name a few. In 2021, she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Arden has also been inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, has a Star on Canada’s Walk of Fame and has been awarded the Order of Canada.
Season 3 of Arden’s CTV hit original comedy series JANN premiered in September 2021. With Arden serving as co-creator and star of the show where she plays a fictionalized version of herself, Season 1 of Jann was the most-watched new Canadian comedy series of the 2018-19 broadcast season. Other screen credits include guest appearances in Wynonna Earp (Syfy), Private Eyes (Fox), The Detour (TBS), and Workin’ Moms (Netflix).
Workshops
How Do I Get My Project Over the Finish Line
You Don't Have to Be a Great Writer to Tell a Great Story
Kevin Chong
Giller Prize finalist,
author of eight books
Kevin Chong is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novel The Double Life of Benson Yu, which was a finalist for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize and named a Best Book of Canadian Fiction by the CBC. His creative nonfiction and journalism have recently appeared in Time, Literary Hub, Montecristo, and the Globe and Mail. An associate professor at the UBC Okanagan, he lives in Vancouver with his family.
(Photo by Iris Chia)
Workshops
On Metafiction: Bringing the writing process into your story
Challenging the Hero’s Journey: Taking a U-turn from a classic narrative pathway
Meng Jin
Recipient of the Creative Capital Award
Meng Jin is the author of the novel Little Gods (Custom House) and the short story collection Self-Portrait with Ghost (Mariner). Her short fiction has been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes, and her books have been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner, PEN/Open Book Award, NYPL Young Lions Prize, and the LATimes First Fiction Prize. She is currently writing a fake memoir, for which she received a 2021 Creative Capital Award.
Workshops
Desire
Rocks and water
Yrsa Daley-Ward
PEN Ackerley Prize winner, poet, screenwriter
From the North West of England, Yrsa Daley-Ward is a poet, writer, and actress of mixed Jamaican and Nigerian heritage. She is the author of The How, bone, and The Terrible, her autobiographical novel, for which she won the PEN Ackerley Prize. She is most known for her debut book, and her live poetry performances. Yrsa fuses poetry with theatre, music, and storytelling and has been writing for as long as she can remember. Yrsa also co-wrote Black Is King, Beyoncé's musical film and visual album. Yrsa's upcoming suspenseful novel, The Catch, will be published by Liferight Books, WW Norton, in June 2025. She splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. Her popular Substack newsletter, 'The Utter,' reaches tens of thousands of subscribers weekly.
(Photo by Joshua M Shelton)
Workshops
Writing into the Unsayable
Everyday Alchemy - Writing from Life's Raw Materials
Danny Ramadan
Award-winning author, LGBTQ-refugees advocate
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author and LGBTQ-refugees advocate. His memoir, Crooked Teeth, came out in May 2024 to raving reviews. His latest novel, The Foghorn Echoes won the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction, and was nominated for the BC & Yukon Book awards, and the city of Vancouver Book Award. The Clothesline Swing won the Independent Publisher Book Award, longlisted for Canada Reads, and is translated to multiple languages. His award-winning children’s books The Salma Series received the Nautilus Book Award, The Publishing Triangle Award, the Middle East Book Award, amongst dozens of other nominations and honours. Since his arrival to Canada, Ramadan has raised over $300,000 for LGBTQ+ identifying refugees ensuring safe passage to more than two dozen queer and trans refugees. Ramadan graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Adler University. He lives in Vancouver with his husband and two dogs. When he is not writing, he is probably playing video games.
Workshops
Back to Basics
The Three Bodies Problem
Rick Jervis
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Rick Jervis is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author with more than three decades of experience working at major publications.
He is the author of THE DEVIL BEHIND THE BADGE, a non-fiction thriller about a U.S. Border Patrol agent turned serial killer, which has been widely praised, and a staff writer at USA TODAY.
While working at the Miami Herald earlier in his career, Rick was on a team that won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism for a series on voter fraud in a Miami mayoral election. He also worked at the Chicago Tribune before becoming the Baghdad Bureau Chief for USA TODAY in 2005. While in Baghdad, Rick took part in more than 20 military embeds, covered the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein, and wrote about the growing Sunni-Shiite conflict, the rise in sniper shootings by insurgents and the Green Zone suicide bombing. He also covered the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in southern Lebanon and the hotel suicide bombings in Amman, Jordan. In 2006, Rick won USA TODAY’s prestigious Staffer of the Year Award.
Rick currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two daughters, and writes about the border, immigration and other topics.
Workshops
Investigative Narrative: Crafting Stories that Hum and Reveal
The Art of the Interview
Thordis Elva
Award-winning Icelandic writer, activist
Thordis Elva is an Icelandic writer, speaker and activist. Her memoir, South of Forgiveness, which she co-authored with her perpetrator of sexual assault, was recently published in the 14th country with the accompanying TED talk having been viewed over 10 million times. Her books, films and plays have won various awards and she was elected Woman of the Year for her contributions to gender-equality. As a public speaker, she has given talks at the UN, the European Council and the EU, to name a few. Her work has been published across four continents and has influenced national policy as well as the global dialogue. Thordis has also worked as a journalist, clinical hypnotherapist and is the founder and current chairperson of the Nordic Digital Rights and Equality Foundation. She believes that writers are healers as well as warriors, and that both are equally vital in today’s world.
(Photo by Ásta Kristjáns)
Workshops
Writing the Change the World
Get Out of Your Head: Writing From Your Subconscious
Pedro Gunnlaugur Garcia
Icelandic Literary Prize winner
Pedro Gunnlaugur Garcia was born in Lisbon in 1983 to an Icelandic mother and Portuguese father. Raised mostly in Reykjavík, he graduated from the University of Iceland with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a Master’s in Culture and Communication. He is known for his poignant and introspective works, use of magic realism and exploration of the complexities of human relationships and the challenges of intimacy and communication. Pedro's debut, Languageless (Málleysingjarnir, 2019), won him the New Voices grant from the Icelandic Literature Center. His second novel, Lungs (Lungu, 2022), was an immediate success and received the Icelandic Literary Prize.
(Photo by Alessia Milo)
Workshops
History in the Making
The Alchemy of Storytelling: On Magical Realism
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