Iceland Writers Retreat

Explore, Learn, Create

"If you’ve ever wanted to explore Iceland’s natural beauty and hone your writing skills, here’s your chance."

– Kirkus Reviews, "Writing Retreats to Inspire You in 2025"

"Quite possibly the world's most special creative writing course."

– Travel writer Rory MacLean, 2018 faculty member

"The perfect place to discover literary inspiration."

– The Daily Beast

"For a writer, it doesn't get much better than this."

– Huffington Post

"Absolutely superb in every way."

– Rozalind Dineen, Features Editor at the Times Literary Supplement (TLS)

"If you have a chance to attend the Iceland Writers Retreat, leap at it roaring."

– Lauren Groff, National Book Award nominee and 2018 faculty

"It was life changing ... an incredible experience."

– Kevin Larimer, Editor in Chief, Poets & Writers

"One of the world's best writers' retreats"

– The Sydney Morning Herald

"One of the most thoughtfully planned, helpful, and inspirational events ever."

– Carol, 2015, 2016, 2017 participant

"The most prestigious of its kind in the world."

– Danny Ramadan, 2023 faculty member, returning for 2025

Join us at the Iceland Writers Retreat from April 15-19, 2026, 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 literary tours to experience Iceland’s inspiring nature
Literary walking tour of Reykjavík, a UNESCO City of Literature
Additional readings and panels by our faculty
Receptions, music, readings, meals, and more!

2024 Iceland Writers Retreat faculty photo.

2025 Faculty

We will begin announcing IWR 2026 faculty members soon.

Curtis Sittenfeld

FICTION

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 30 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)

Plotting Your Novel From Start to Finish

Fiction Troubleshooting

Helen Macdonald

MEMOIR, NON-FICTION

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, and naturalist. They are best known for the internationally bestselling and prize-winning memoir H Is for Hawk and the essay collection Vesper Flights. They've 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. 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 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)

Memoir

Encountering the Non-Human

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

FICTION

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. His bestselling 2023 novel, The Sisters, was a finalist for the August Prize. 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.

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)

Rebellious Voices

Blueprints for Fiction:
Structuring Your Novel with Purpose

Kevin Chong

FICTION, NON-FICTION

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)

On Metafiction:
Bringing the writing process into your story

Challenging the Hero’s Journey: Taking
a U-turn from a classic narrative pathway

Yrsa Daley-Ward

MEMOIR, FICTION

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)

Writing into the Unsayable

Everyday Alchemy - Writing from
Life's Raw Materials

Jann Arden

MEMOIR, FICTION

Jann Arden is a multi-platinum, award-winning singer, songwriter, actor and author. Arden has released 15 albums with 19 top 10 singles. Arden has written six books, including her debut novel The Bittlemores, released in 2023. Her 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.

Her album Descendant was released in January 2022 and MIXTAPE in 2025.

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).

How Do I Get My Project Over the Finish Line

You Don't Have to Be a Great Writer
to Tell a Great Story

Danny Ramadan

FICTION, MEMOIR

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.

Back to Basics

The Three Bodies Problem

Thordis Elva

MEMOIR

Thordis Elva is an Icelandic writer, speaker, and activist. Her memoir, South of Forgiveness, which she co-authored with her perpetrator of sexual assault, is published in 14 countries, and the accompanying TED talk has been viewed more than 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)

Writing the Change the World

Get Out of Your Head:
Writing From Your Subconscious

Meng Jin

FICTION

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 writing a fake memoir, for which she received a 2021 Creative Capital Award.

Desire

Rocks and water

Rick Jervis

NON-FICTION

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.

Investigative Narrative: Crafting Stories that Hum and Reveal

The Art of the Interview

Pedro Gunnlaugur Garcia

FICTION

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)

History in the Making

The Alchemy of Storytelling: On Magical Realism

Iceland Writers Retreat

Join us at the Iceland Writers Retreat from April 15-19, 2026, in Reykjavík, Iceland

What's Included in the Retreat

2025 Faculty

We will begin announcing IWR 2026 faculty members soon.

Curtis Sittenfeld

FICTION

Helen Macdonald

MEMOIR, NON-FICTION

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

FICTION

Kevin Chong

FICTION, NON-FICTION

Yrsa Daley-Ward

MEMOIR, FICTION

Jann Arden

MEMOIR, FICTION

Danny Ramadan

FICTION, MEMOIR

Thordis Elva

MEMOIR

Meng Jin

FICTION

Rick Jervis

NON-FICTION

Pedro Gunnlaugur Garcia

FICTION

IWR Founding Sponsor

With Support from

Join Our Mailing List