Iceland Writers Retreat

Explore, Learn, Create

Hero-city-2 (1)

"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 next Iceland Writers Retreat

April 15-19, 2026, in Reykjavík

The non-profit Iceland Writers Retreat introduces people to Iceland's rich literary heritage and offers small-group workshops on the craft of writing. It was nominated for a Blaze Inclusion Award for promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the Nordic countries.

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

Music, readings, meals, and more!

IWR 2026 Faculty

(We are still adding authors to our faculty!)

Susan Choi

FICTION

Susan - website Flashlight

Susan Choi is the author of Trust Exercise, which won the 2019 National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. Choi's latest novel, Flashlight, was named "A Most Anticipated Book of the Year" by Time, The Washington Post, and Literary Hub and received a star  

review from Booklist. Vulture said, "Susan Choi is Still Outlandishly Talented."

Choi's bestselling novel Trust Exercise was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, Bustle, and Time. It is currently being developed as a limited television series.

She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Susan Choi and her work have been praised by many. Joan Didion describes her as “A natural—a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability.” Jennifer Egan says Choi’s work is “Deeply impressive, confident…astute, psychologically persuasive." While Jhumpa Lahiri says Choi writes “with uncompromising grace and mastery.”

Born in South Bend, Indiana, to a Korean father and a Jewish mother, Choi was raised there and in Houston, Texas. She studied literature at Yale and writing at Cornell, and worked for several years as a fact-checker for The New Yorker. Choi teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn.

(Photo by Heather Weston)

Workshops

Generative Strategies

Plotting Conflict

 

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

FICTION

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and his book Chain-Gang All-Stars

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the author of bestseller Chain-Gang All-Stars and NYT-bestselling short story collection Friday Black. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and is a 2025 Guggenheim fellow. Chain Gang All-Stars was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction,

winner of the 2025 ALA Alex Award, and longlisted for the The Center for Fiction’s 2023 First Novel Prize, The Aspen Literary Award, and The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, among others. A Best Book of the Year in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews, Chain Gang All-Stars was praised by Stephen King as a story with, “brutal subject matter, beautiful writing… this one is from the heart,” while the Washington Post compared the work to the dystopian triumphs of Orwell and Atwood, “Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing.” Chain Gang All-Stars was featured by The Today Show’s Read with Jenna Book Club and Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club. In 2025, the book was awarded the Inside Literary Prize—the first major U.S. book award judged exclusively by incarcerated readers.

Friday Black explores the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. The New York Times called Friday Black “an unbelievable debut, one that announces a new and necessary American voice.” Of the collection, George Saunders notes, “These stories are an excitement and a wonder: strange, crazed, urgent and funny, yet classical in the way they take on stubborn human problems: the depravities of capitalism, love struggling to assert itself within heartless systems. The wildly talented Adjei-Brenyah has made these edgy tales immensely charming, via his resolute, heartful, immensely likeable narrators, capable of seeing the world as blessed and cursed at once.” Friday Black was winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.

Originally from Spring Valley, New York, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah graduated from SUNY Albany, received his MFA from Syracuse University, and has taught at Columbia University, Syracuse University, and The New School.

(Photo by Alex M. Philip)

Workshops

The Fundamental Tools

Seeing Above + Below + Through

 

Ann-Marie MacDonald

FICTION, PLAYWRITING

Author Ann-Marie MacDonald and her book Fayne

Ann-Marie MacDonald is a novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host. Her 2022 novel Fayne is a Canadian bestseller and one of the Globe and Mail best books of the year. She has written Commonwealth Prize-winning novel Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, and Adult Onset. Her writing for the stage includes plays

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), Belle Moral:  A Natural History, and Hamlet-911; the libretto for the chamber opera, Nigredo Hotel, and book and lyrics for Anything That Moves. Her work has been honoured with numerous other awards, including the Chalmers, the Governor General’s, Gemini, Dora Mavor Moore, John Drainie, the Gascon-Thomas, the Canadian Authors Association Award, and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award. Ann-Marie graduated from the Acting Program of The National Theatre School of Canada in 1980. In 2019 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is married to theatre director Alisa Palmer, with whom she has two children.

(Photo by Travis Silverman)

Workshops

Where Do Stories Come From?

We All Need to Know How to Write
a Good Scene

Evan Osnos

JOURNALISM

Evan-website (1)

Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Based in Washington D.C., he writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was the China correspondent at The New Yorker from 2008 to 2013. His book The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich was published in June 2025 and was

an instant New York Times bestseller. His first book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the 2014 National Book award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2020, he published the international bestseller Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, based on interviews with Biden, Barack Obama, and others. His book Wildland: The Making of America's Fury was published in September 2021. Prior to The New Yorker, Osnos worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He has also worked in the Middle East, reporting mostly from Iraq. He and his wife, Sarabeth Berman, have two children. 

Workshops

The Rubber-Band Theory: Tips on Developing Tension and Suspense

Pitch to Publication: How to Turn Ideas into Longform Nonfiction

Kamila Shamsie

FICTION

Kamila-website (1)

Kamila Shamsie is the author of eight novels, including Best of Friends, Burnt Shadows, Kartography and Home Fire, which have been translated into more than 30 languages. Home Fire won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. Four of her novels have won awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. A Vice-President of

the Royal Society of Literature, she grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London and in Doha where she is the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Georgetown University in Qatar.

(Photo by Alex von Tunzelmann)

Workshops

Where Are We? The Importance of Setting

How to Read as Writers

Ayana Mathis

FICTION

Ayana - website
Ayana Mathis is the author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Knopf, 2012) and The Unsettled (Knopf, 2023), the inaugural winner of McSweeney’s Gabe Hudson Prize. The book was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of 2023, a best of 2023 by The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, an Oprah Daily Best Novels of 2023, and
a Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2023. The New York Times calls it, “Poignant, heartbreaking,” while The Minneapolis Star Tribune describes it as, “An ardent, ambitious, and carefully stitched tapestry of a novel, one that deserves and rewards our attention.” 
 
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times bestseller, the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, a 2013 New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, and was long listed for the Dublin Literary Award and nominated for Hurston/Wright Foundation's Legacy Award. Mathis’s essays and critcism have been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, T Magazine, The Financial Times, RollingStone, Guernica and Glamour. Currently pursuing her Masters of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary, Mathis’s most recent nonfiction explores the intertwining of faith and American literature in her five-part New York Times essay series “Imprinted By Belief”.
 
Mathis is a finalist for the 2025 Dos Passos Prize and a 2025-26 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Her work has been supported by the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She was a 2024-25 American Academy in Berlin Prize Fellow. Mathis received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and went on to become the first African-American woman to serve as an Assistant Professor in that program. She currently teaches at Hunter College in the MFA Program. 
 
(Photo by Beowulf Sheehan)

Workshops

(Workshop titles to come)

Katrín Jakobsdóttir

FICTION

Katrín Jakobsdóttir

Katrín Jakobsdóttir is a crime fiction scholar and co-author of the novel Reykjavík: A Crime Story, which The New York Times named one of the Best Crime Novels of 2023. She served as the prime minister of Iceland from 2017 to 2024 and led a three party government. Katrín was a member of the Icelandic parliament from 2007 to 2024 and also served

as Minister of Education, Science, and Culture, and Minister of Nordic Cooperation. She was chair of the Left-Green Movement from 2013 to 2024 and vice-chair of that party from 2003. She ran for president of Iceland in 2024 and came in second with 25 percent of the popular vote.

Before entering politics she studied Icelandic literature, worked as literary critic, teacher and in a publishing house. She co-wrote Reykjavík: A Crime Story with international bestselling author Ragnar Jónasson. Kirkus Reviews named Reykjavík to its list of Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2023. The novel has been translated into 15 languages, and its sequel, Franksi spítalinn, was published in 2025.

She now works as senior emissary and chair of the Polar Dialogue at the Arctic Circle, serves as the chair of the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, lectures on various topics and works as an independent consultant. She is also chair of the Reykjavík Arts Festival and a member on the board of University of Iceland. She lives in Reykjavík, is married to Gunnar Sigvaldason, and they have three sons. 

(Photo by Baldur Kristjánsson)

Workshops

Going from Reading to Writing

Ian Williams

FICTION, NON-FICTION, POETRY

Ian Williams

Ian Williams is the author of nine acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. His latest novel, You’ve Changed, was longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize. In 2024, he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, “What I Mean to Say,” about rehabilitating conversations. His book Disorientation considers the impact of racial encounters on

ordinary people. It was selected as a best book of the year by the Boston Globe.

His novel Reproduction won the 2019 Giller Prize and was published in Canada, the US, the UK, and Italy. His poetry collection, Word Problems, converts the ethical and political issues of our time into math and grammar problems. It won the Raymond Souster Award from the League of Canadian Poets. His previous collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize. He is a trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Williams completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. After several years teaching poetry in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Williams returned to the University of Toronto as a tenured full professor of English, director of the Creative Writing program and academic advisor for the Massey College William Southam Journalism Fellowship. He was a former Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program and has held many other posts, including Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris.

Workshops

Four Places to Find Poems

Dealing with Change: How to Write Convincing Character and Personal Transformations

Jesse Thistle

MEMOIR, POETRY

Author Jesse Thistle

Jesse Thistle is Métis-Cree, from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and an assistant professor in Humanities at York University in Toronto. From the Ashes was the top-selling Canadian book in 2020, the winner of the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction, Indigenous Voices Award, and High Plains Book Award, and also a finalist for CBC Canada Reads. Jesse won a 

Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2016, and is a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Vanier Scholar. A frequent keynote speaker, he lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife, Lucie, and the most wonderful little human he’s ever known, his daughter Rose. Jesse is at work on multiple projects, including his next book. Visit him at JesseThistle.com.

(Photo by Martha Hewson)

Workshops

Finding Voice Amid Impostor Syndrome

The Métis-Cree Storytelling Tradition: Developing a Sense of Empathy by Exploring Indigenous Perspectives

Jill Dawson

FICTION

Jill Dawson - website

Jill Dawson is the award-winning author of 12 novels published by Sceptre including The Bewitching, Fred and Edie (shortlisted for the Whitbread and Orange Prizes), The Great Lover (about the poet Rupert Brooke) and The Crime Writer (the story of Patricia Highsmith's brief sojourn in England), winner of the East Anglian Fiction Award and 

East Anglian Book of the Year. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the editor of six collections of poetry and short-stories. She founded Gold Dust Mentoring for writers and has taught creative writing for 30 years in a range of settings, from the University of East Anglia and Amherst College to the Faber Academy, Guardian Masterclasses, and Arvon Foundation. Her novel Pixie is set to release in March 2026, published by Bloomsbury.

(Photo by Joanne Coates)

Workshops

Blueprint for Your Novel

Tarot for Writers and Creatives

Helen Jukes

CREATIVE NON-FICTION, MEMOIR

Helen Jukes and her book A Honeybee has Five Openings

Helen Jukes is a memoirist and writer of creative non-fiction, and the author of two books, A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings and Mother Animal. A Honeybee Heart was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag non-fiction award and selected by actor Emma Watson when she curated a collection of books for the UN climate conference, COP26. 

Mother Animal was a top pick of 2025 in the New Scientist and Nature Journal, and featured as Editor’s Choice in The Bookseller. Helen’s work is published internationally, and has appeared in the New York Times, Aeon, Port magazine and others. She currently teaches for Faber Academy and at the University of Oxford, and lives with her daughter on the edge of the Peak District, UK.

Workshops

Writing the More-than-Human

Self and Place

2025 Faculty

Thank you to our wonderful IWR 2025 faculty!

Curtis Sittenfeld - circle

Curtis Sittenfeld

Helen Macdonald - circle

Helen Macdonald

Jonas - circle

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Yrsa - circle

Yrsa Daley-Ward

Photo of author Jann Arden

Jann Arden

Photo of author Kevin Chong

Kevin Chong

Thordis Elva - circle

Thordis Elva

Rick - newsletter

Rick Jervis

Pedro - circle

Pedro Gunnlaugur Garcia

Meng Jin - circle

Meng Jin

Danny Ramadan - circle

Danny Ramadan

Retreat Format

There is variation in each year's retreat. But our event has followed this format in the past.
(Workshop registrations start taking place by December.)

Day 1

Hotel and retreat check-ins

Opening dinner and faculty readings

Day 2

Three small-group workshop slots

Literary day tour option 1

Possible evening event

Day 3

Three small-group workshop slots

Literary day tour option 2

Possible evening event

Guided literary walking tour of Reykjavík

Day 4

Three small-group workshop slots

Literary day tour option 3

Pub night with readings and music by local artists

Day 5

Morning Q&A roundtables

Departures

The 2-day Relax & Write Extension is open to all!

The Read & Write Extension provides two dinners and transportation with an open mic on the second night. 

We are grateful to have support from