The Origin Story
where did this retreat come from and why are you going through all this trouble?
Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle are two of my favorite people in publishing. When I heard they were doing a big event for writers, editors, and publishing professionals in general, I was 100% sold from the beginning.
Then I discovered it was in New Orleans (halfway across the country, falling apart, and famously moist). Then I discovered how much it cost!
In the end, even those things did not dissuade me. I was still in. Not simply because Russell and Monica were associated with it, but because of how they crafted it, what they valued, the distinctives that made their experience unique, and their thoughtfulness regarding the interaction between attendees, both faculty and participants. They tried hard to blur the usual boundaries between faculty and participant, and mostly succeeded. I loved it. It was awesome and awe-inspiring. It even changed my opinion of New Orleans!
The Future of Publishing / WriterMBA, for the scant two years that it existed, was a happily transformative experience for me.
I learned so much. I felt like I was able to contribute so much, and at the same time I came away rested and refreshed. It was a tremendous networking experience because we weren’t focused on “networking” per se, but on being humans together and helping one another to “unlock the blocks” that we each struggled with— things I hadn’t expected to talk about, or even think about, during a “writers’ event.”
For me and many others, Russell and Monica achieved their goals. I quietly mourned their decision not to continue producing it (and underwriting its costs!) past the WriterMBA event of March 2024.
I am nowhere near the organizational maven that Russell & Monica are (nor Tawdra Kandle or Mel Jolly, their amazing event team). But I wanted that kind of experience again: a gathering of writers and those who help them succeed, in which the participants’ contributions are recognized as experts and the experts are recognized as being in-process themselves. An event in which I find both rest and invigoration, an opportunity to help and to be helped, to grow and to grow others, together. I longed for something to fill that gap, to fill the emptiness left in the wake of the demise of Writer MBA.
I couldn’t find another event like that.
So I had to create one myself.
This inchoate desire finally germinated and began to take shape in a conversation with Troy Lambert at a publishing symposium in Salt Lake City, back in 2025. We came up with a name, a length and location, and ideas for how we could structure the time so that we weren’t trying to “balance” rest and work, learning and practice, but instead “crush the fulcrum” that forced most writers’ retreats into a false dichotomy between those things.
Troy and I spent months putting together the various elements that became the Fjeldheim Writers’ Retreat. We even did a test-run in October 2025— if you were on my Substack or email list last summer, you may have been invited to it! All PRESS members certainly were. Our goal was simple: in Troy’s words, step away from the noise and get real work done.
Troy, Holly, and I were all delighted with the results. We were ready for prime time!
Not only that, two brilliant influencers in the publishing world1 also understood and appreciated what we were trying to accomplish with this retreat, and signed on as co-facilitators with us. So did Stacey Smekofsky, of Print to Pro. Suddenly we had plenty of faculty-facilitators, all we needed was participants!
The Inaugural Official Fjeldheim Writers’ Retreat!
We have been promoting the Fjeldheim Writers Retreat since March of this year, and we’ve had a lot of positive interest but not quite enough actual registrations. June 30 will be the end of our Early Bird period, and we’ve got people on the fence but very few actually committing to this.
I understand that it’s expensive. That’s because …it’s expensive to create a unique, iconic event with all the trimmings. We’ve planned some great swag, great food, and some other great things that all come at a certain (great) cost. I am feeling all the investment anxiety that Russell described about WriterMBA (albeit in a smaller frame of reference).
If you love the idea of this retreat, and you are able to make the trip, and you are available on those dates (the second week of October 2026), but you simply cannot swing the expense, reach out to me directly (message me here, or email, or just text me, my phone number is in every personal email I send). I can offer you an unpublishable discount and a payment plan.
But June 30 is a hard deadline for that.
I understand that in this very first year we are expected to take some losses, since we haven’t built momentum yet as an “event” in the hypothetical marketplace (I would love to visit this marketplace of events). And yes, this is a small event, no more than sixteen participants. But we also have a minimum number of participants, and a minimum income to cover our expenses, in order to pull this off. And right after June 30th we will need to make a decision about whether we can press onward with the retreat this year.
We have poured so much time and energy and love into it, I’m sure you will receive so much love and energy from it that it will prove to be a transformative time in your own life. I can go on and on about the details, and I probably will in later posts, but right now the critical question to ask yourself is not “can I afford this unnecessary thing,” but “can I afford to miss this opportunity to level up and achieve more than I expected in the years to come?”
Write well and publish wisely!
that would be Becca Syme and Roland Denzel —I’ll talk more about them in the next post!