Welcome to Retreat West

About our community

Our online community is here to help you write more, learn more, submit more, and get published more often. We work with great authors to bring you regular online events and exclusive content to help you advance your writing practice, connect with other writers and have fun. 

Our membership plans are great value for money and you can choose to just have access to the community platform, which includes all the chat, events and articles, or you can have additional benefits such as feedback, discounts on courses and entry to our regular competitions (which offer great cash prizes and anthology or online publication) included. All the info on what's included with the different membership options is at the bottom of the page.

Reasons to join us

• We're friendly and supportive; we're all writers too; and we’re bringing the writing community together in a positive and motivational online space. The community is lively and active and will keep you writing!
• We've got monthly masterclasses all about writing, feedback sessions, craft articles, writing prompts and exercises, and lots more. 
• There are 1-hour Zoom writing sessions on Friday mornings at 11am (UK time) hosted by either Amanda Saint, Gaynor Jones or Electra Rhodes.
• Our event calendar is full of great authors and tutors sharing their knowledge, inspiration and insights about novel writing, flash fictions, short stories and lots more. Plus these events get you writing new work!
• Whenever you join us you'll still be able to catch up with the events you missed as they're recorded and available for our members to watch over and over again whenever suits them best.
• Our members get advance access to our courses, festivals and submission opportunities.
• We run free to enter, member-only competitions to win places on courses, event tickets, feedback sessions, books, and more.

Upcoming Online Workshops/Masterclasses

4th November 2021 - 7-8pm GMT

Successfully Bringing the Strange into Your Stories 

Award-winning writer Gaynor Jones will guide you through her writing process, from the spark of a strange idea, to building up layers to create a compelling and unique piece of fiction.

In 2019 her flash fiction collection, Business As Usual, received a special mention in the Saboteur Awards for Best Short Story Collection. Her work has been widely published, and she has won or been placed in several competitions, including  winning first prize in the 12th round of the prestigious Bath Flash Fiction Award. She lives in Greater Manchester with her husband, dog, small child and a headful of weird ideas.

2nd December 2021 - 6.30-7.30pm GMT

Develop Your Novel in a Flash 

Join award-winning writer and publisher, Amanda Saint, to discover how to use flash fiction techniques to create first draft chapters of your novels.

Amanda started Retreat West in 2012 and expanded to include the award-winning publishing arm in 2017. She has been designing and teaching online courses, and live workshops, for many years and has worked as an editor on hundreds of manuscripts. Her debut novel, As If I Were A River, was a NetGalley Top 10 Book of the Month and a Book Magnet Blog Top 20 Book of 2016. Her second novel, Remember Tomorrow, published in March 2019 to critical acclaim.

Amanda’s stories have been widely published; longlisted in the Mslexia Flash Fiction Competition, Fish Flash Fiction Prize, and Ink Tears Short Story Prize; shortlisted for the Flash 500 several times; and won the Editor’s Choice Prize at 101 Words. She has just completed a novella-in-flash and is working on a flash fiction collection. 

January

The Four Elements of Writing Great Fiction with Andrew Wille

February

TBC

March

Online Flash Fest - info coming soon!