Peloponnese, Greece
November 2nd - November 8th, 2025
We’ve always wanted to write in Greece…
We’ve wanted to smell that Mediterranean breeze, to watch the way the sun sets over distant islands, to savor the worn pages of Papadiamandis or Kazantzakis and imagine fisherman and village legends and the generations of women who walked with their spindles in one hand and their buckets of water in the other. And of course, we wanted to eat the olives and smell the herbs and write from the first soft light of the morning until the violet hues of evening.
We set out last year to find the right place to gather with our writers, a place that feels like a village of our own with kind people and thoughtful space and dappled light and horizons as expanding as our own.
The Retreat
Wide Open Writing retreats focus on Living Your Creative Life. With daily morning yoga, two writing workshops per day, one-on-one sessions, and a fabulous evening salon, we offer a space that breeds creativity and transformation. We also recommend and leave time for walks, shoreline wanderings, naps, sunrises, sunsets, laughter, and nourishment of body and soul. We encourage a widening of the gap between these moments and the ones we’ve temporarily disengaged from (grocery shopping, phone calls, dental appointments, laundry), and that you sink into the experience of reconnecting with your senses and your writing.
We will be writing and nurturing our creative selves for seven days and six nights. You don’t need to bring a novel plot or an exact idea of what you want to be working on. We will be working with prompts designed to help you find your story. And if you do have a project in mind you want to be working on, our daily writing and feedback sessions will allow you to enrich the components of your writing. In either case, you’ll be moving toward the power and the passion in your writing. Our model for feedback is designed to empower what is strong and authentic in your writing in order to move your work forward meaningfully. Ultimately, that is why we write, why we create.
The late autumn climate of Kardamyli is typically mild and pleasant, though a storm or rain is always welcome to set the mood. The days can be warm and the evenings cool. It is the time of olive harvest, so the air smells of earth and toil and the salt of the sea. Our schedule allows for plenty of time for playing, hiking, exploring, finding some shade to hide out with a book, and, of course, writing.
The Location
Welcome to Kardamyli. It’s a small village on the south end of the Peloponnese (a peninsula of the southern region of Greece). This idyllic coastal village is bathed in autumn sunlight, mild in the late season, and quiet in the month of November. If the season is long, the water is pleasant. The streets are calm as the tourists have mostly returned home, the cafés still host the locals and visitors. Just outside the heart of the village we’ll be finding our writerly reprieve in the boutique NoTos Hotel. This seaside resort offers small apartments and rooms in stone cottages, each with their own terrace or patio, just a quiet stroll from the lapping shores of the Ionian Sea.
Cost
Prices include 6 nights of stay at the NoTos Hotel, all workshop fees, group transportation by private coach to and from the Athens airport, breakfast, lunch, and dinner (including wine), and optional daily yoga.
Single apartment - $4500
Single apartments have an ensuite bathroom and terrace or patio and private entrance.
Shared apartment - $3900
Shared apartments sleep two in separate beds and have an ensuite bathroom and terrace or patio and a private entrance.
To secure your spot, select from the available lodging options and make your deposit. The remainder will be invoiced 60 days prior to the retreat.
CANCELLATION POLICY
Deposits and full payments are non-refundable.
If you have any questions about whether or not this retreat is for you, please contact us. We would be happy to answer your questions or even put you in touch with a past participant.
